Queen's Law Reports 2024 by Queen's University Faculty of Law

Queen’s L AW REPORTS 2024

Remedies for health-care systems in crisis

Legal, medical, and policy experts share insights and prescriptions

Primers for professionals

New master classes bridge theory and practice in emerging fields

Venture into innovation zone Law'07 grad tailors legal and strategic business advice to tech startups

COVER STORY

12 Remedies for the health-care crisis Faculty experts in health law, policy, and medicine – and alumni with a range of critical perspectives – share insights on pressing national, provincial, and international issues affecting health care today.

FEATURES

22Primers for professionals

Following the success of its first professional program in legal AI, the Faculty is planning more master classes for legal and non-legal participants to meet evolving needs in rapidly changing fields.

27Teaching advanced skills

Seasoned legal professionals Dhaman Kissoon, Law’89, and Justice David Stratas, Law’84, are among the adjunct faculty who offer insights, wisdom, and knowledge that can’t be found in any casebook.

GRADUATE STUDENT PROFILE

10Creating and holding space for those who come after her

Abby Green, a Mohawk Master of Laws candidate and Supreme Court of Canada clerk, hopes to break new ground in Indigenous law research and practice.

ALUMNI PROFILE

24Lawyer ‘ventures’ into innovation zone

Aliya Ramji, Law’07, directed her early interest in science and law into a unique company that provides tech startups with the legal and strategic business counsel they need to grow.

Queen’s Law Reports is published annually by QUEEN’S FACULTY OF LAW MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS

Tim Butters, Director

Queen’s University

Kingston ON Canada K7L 3N6 law.queensu.ca

Editor

Lisa Graham, Com’88, Artsci’92, MPA’08 Manager of Communications

Tel: 613-533-6000, ext. 74259

Email: grahaml@queensu.ca

Copy-editor

Kirsteen MacLeod

Contributors

Ken Cuthbertson, Arts’74, Law’83

Nancy Dorrance, Artsci’76

Phil Gaudreau

Mark Witten

Design + Production

Larry Harris

Front Cover Photography

Shutterstock/Stock Studio 4477

DEPARTMENTS

1 DEAN’S MESSAGE

2 SCHOOL NEWS

30 ALUMNI NOTES With Judicial Appointments

DEAN’S COUNCIL MEMBERS

Kelley McKinnon, Law’88 (Artsci’85), Chair

Senior Fellow 2021, Advanced Leadership Initiative, Harvard University Board Director, Ontario Securities Commission

Frank E. Walwyn, Law’93, Vice-Chair Partner WeirFoulds LLP

Sheila A. Murray, Law’82 (Com’79), Past Chair Chair, Teck Resources Limited Director, BCE Inc.

Trustee, Granite REIT and Queen’s University

Peter Brady, Law’96

Executive Vice President and General Counsel Lundin Mining

James Dorr, Law’87 (Artsci’84) General Counsel Foundation Services Ltd.

Peter Griffin, KC, Law’77 Counsel

Lenczner Slaght Royce Smith Griffin LLP

Jennifer Keenan, Law’90 Adjudicator

Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada

Alexandra Manthorpe, Law’10 Partner

Cunningham, Swan, Carty, Little & Bonham LLP

Allan M. McGavin, Law’12 (Com’08) Chief Legal Officer Corix

Kristin J. Morch, Law’85 (Artsci’80) Executive VP Development and General Counsel

Continental Saxon Group

Aliya Ramji, Law’07 Partner, McCarthy Tétrault Co-founder, MT>Ventures

Anton Sahazizian, Law’94

Managing Director, Global Head of Mergers & Acquisitions Moelis & Company

Stephen Shamie, Law’86 Partner

Hicks Morley Hamilton Stewart Storie LLP

Richard Tory, Law’89 President

Morgan Stanley

Patrice Walch-Watson, Law’91

Senior Managing Director, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board

The Hon. Darla Wilson, Law’84 (Artsci’81) Justice Court of Appeal for Ontario

We are pleased to present Queen’s Law Reports 2024, proﬁling the incredible achievements of the Queen’s Law community in research, practice, public service, philanthropy, advocacy, and more.

This past year has been transformative and challenging in equal measure. We have reached new heights in producing cross-disciplinary legal research on emerging issues that is elevating intellectual discourse, informing jurists and policy-makers, and setting new standards for key sectors of our economy.

Our commitment to legal innovation remains unmatched. Through the Conflict Analytics Lab, the new AI and Law Certificate, curricular enhancements, and other initiatives, we are at the forefront of the technological revolution in artificial intelligence, and we are preparing our students for the rigours of 21stcentury legal practice.

However, this year of growth and change has unfolded against the backdrop of significant disruption and unrest. The outbreak of geopolitical conflicts around the world has deeply affected our community Throughout this, we have reaffirmed our commitment to inclusivity and respect, encouraging open and constructive dialogue, and harnessing the significant power of law and academia to contextualize and address the intractable issues of our time.

Mentorship, curricular evolution, research, and experiential learning, remain critical pillars in ensuring that we train our students to be empathetic, agile, and highly skilled advocates equipped to respond to the shifting legal paradigms of contemporary society. From modernizing our health-care system and advancing Indigenous reconciliation to enshrining laws on gender, sexual identity, and human rights, and developing comprehensive frameworks around artiﬁcial intelligence, climate change, and the digital economy, our students will lead in a new and uncharted legal world.

This rapid change underscores the importance of our integrated community, from our distinguished alumni change makers, to our world-class researchers, dynamic students, and dedicated staff Our mission is supported and elevated by an incredible group of people committed to advancing the values and virtues of law expressed in our motto, “Soit droit fait” (Let law be made / Let right be done).

In the following pages, you will read about our incredible achievements of the past year in many areas of law, as well as the exciting things we have in store. Everyone reading this magazine plays an important role in the continued success of this law school, and we are eternally grateful for your commitment, support, and contributions to Queen’s Law.

All the best,

Colleen M. Flood Dean, Queen’s University Faculty of Law

BERNARD CLARK

National research grants awarded to faculty for ‘insightful’ research

Queen’s Law scholars achieved outstanding success in this year’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada funding competitions. Four faculty members received Insight Grants, which enable scholars to address complex issues about individuals and societies and to further collective understanding. Another professor received an Insight Development Grant to advance a new research question and experiment with a novel method. The Faculty’s success rate was signiﬁcantly above the national average, and its researchers’ projects ranked near the top of those funded. These prestigious awards bolster faculty members’ investigations and provide important opportunities for students to work as research assistants. The ﬁve projects are:

Outsourced AI services: Dahan examines governance, regulation, and transparency

Professor Samuel Dahan is one of three scholars working on a project titled “The Future of Artiﬁcial Intelligence as a Service: Implications for Corporate Governance and AI Regulation.” While AI regulation is a major topic, less attention is given to how AI is outsourced to businesses. This can lead to transparency issues, unfair terms, and misuse of internal data by AI providers. For example, platforms like ChatGPT and Zoom use user-generated content to train AI models without compensation. The project explores the impact of outsourced AI on corporate governance and how these issues should be addressed in Canada’s AI regulation.

In addition, Dahan won Best Paper Prize for “Evaluating AI for Law: Bridging the Gap with Open-Source Solutions” from the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Centre for Legal Innovation and Digital Society, which he presented at CUHK’s 4th Machine Lawyering Conference.

Reframing arbitration:

Karton takes contractarian approach to both private and

public justice

Associate Dean Joshua Karton’s project, “Contracts All the Way Down: A Contractarian Theory of Commercial Arbitration,” proposes a new perspective on arbitration. The conventional view sees arbitrators as private judges, exercising authority delegated by the courts. Karton argues that this is backward: arbitration law is not the privatization of public civil justice but the public enforcement of private justice, similar to enforcing any other contract. This insight has implications for arbitrators’ authority, court supervision of arbitrations, policing bad faith tactics in arbitration, and the very nature of arbitration law.

Transitional justice:

Vasanthakumar explores structural oppression in liberal democracies

Professor Ashwini Vasanthakumar’s project, “Transitional Justice for Everyday Oppression,” explores how transitional

justice can address structural oppression in liberal democracies, which are grappling with colonial, racial, gender, and class injustices. She examines how a transitional justice lens expands our understanding of structural oppression and offers tools to redress and resist oppression. Through case studies on prisons and border control, her research engages with ongoing debates on abolition and reform, investigating how transitional justice can address the wrongs inﬂicted by these regimes of control and containment.

Webber examines shared human vulnerability in government policy

justifications

Governments regularly justify policy measures by referencing the needs of vulnerable populations. Professor Grégoire Webber’s project, “Exploring Our Shared Human Vulnerability: On the Responsibility of Government and Law’s Foundations,” posits that vulnerability is not limited to certain groups but is a shared human experience. It seeks to demonstrate that government policies, such as those supporting asylum-seekers, lowincome families, and Indigenous health,

Professor Samuel Dahan, Director of the Conflict Analytics Lab

BERNARD CLARK

GREG BLACK

Professor Joshua Karton, Associate Dean (Graduate Studies and Program Development)

Professor Ashwini Vasanthakumar, Queen’s National Scholar in Legal and Political Philosophy

fulﬁl a universal responsibility to all. The research expands the understanding of vulnerability, suggesting that law’s commitment to freedom and agency must recognize our collective reliance on one another, thereby providing stronger justiﬁcation for many policies as serving all persons equally.

In addition to their SSHRC grants, Professors Vasanthakumar and Webber received Bruce Mitchell Doctoral Fellowship funding from Queen’s University to jointly supervise an incoming PhD student in legal theory. They also shared the Faculty’s inaugural Les Green Prize for Excellence in Research. Both are addressing complex theoretical questions with signiﬁcant practical implications, particularly for society’s most vulnerable.

Metcalf leads study on private enforcement rights in Canada, U.S.

Professor Cherie Metcalf is leading a new research project, “Culture and Private Enforcement Rights for Public Law,” with U.S. collaborators from Emory, USC, and Stanford. The project has two comparative aspects. One uses computational

FUNDED RESEARCH PROJECTS IN MOTION

linguistics and machine learning to identify private rights of action in Canadian regulatory regimes, comparing them with U.S. state law. The second examines how private rights of action inﬂuence public support for regulation, comparing Canadian and U.S. litigation cultures to explore whether private rights align with political or other cultural factors.

Two other professors are in the second year of advancing their SSHRC-funded projects.

Bala-led team aims to make family justice system more responsive to needs of all Canadians – especially children

Professor Nicholas Bala is leading a multidisciplinary research team on four interrelated projects. In June, he presented a study on litigation abuse, co-authored with Law’23 grads Ella Benedetti and Sydney Franzmann, at an international conference in Boston. The study will be published in Family Court Review. His collaboration with Western Social Work professor Rachel Birnbaum and Jessica Farshait, Law’25, on children resisting parental contact and parental alienation, led to several publications and a presentation at the National Family Law Program. He is also researching systemic discrimination and family violence in Ontario’s Peel Region –focusing on challenges faced by its large racialized and immigrant populations – and with Western Law professor Claire Houston, Law’07, exploring the long-term effects on courtimposed shared parenting.

University Professor

Haak aims to bring conceptual clarity to use of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ in protecting human rights

Professor Debra Haak’s research examines how “sex” has been interpreted and deﬁned in Canadian human rights laws. With policy increasingly oriented towards “gender,” her work will provide judges and legislators with a clearer understanding of potential tensions between rights focused on sex and those focused on gender identity and expression. Funded by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant and the Canadian Bar Association’s Law for the Future Fund, she supervised Law’25 students Heon Lee, Isabella Bianchi, and Javeria Baig in researching tribunal and Supreme Court decisions considering sex, and presented early ﬁndings from her “Sex in the Age of Gender” project at academic conferences. Haak is also writing a book about commercial sex laws, Exploiting Inequality, under advance contract with McGillQueen’s University Press.

BERNARD CLARK

Professor Nicholas Bala, LSM, Law’77, William R. Lederman Distinguished

Professor Debra Haak, PhD’19

BERNARD CLARK

Professor Cherie Metcalf, Associate Dean (Research)

Professor Grégoire Webber, Canada Research Chair in Public Law and Philosophy of Law

QLAW POD

Tops in tax: Queen’s team wins national Bowman Moot

After two intense days of mooting with 16 teams from across Canada last March, the Queen’s team won the 2024 Donald G.H. Bowman National Tax Moot and swept its team awards.

Ari Derohanesian and Jeff McPherson, both Law’24, won Best Overall Team and Best Appellant Factum. Yash Chavda and Liam Day, both Law’25, won Best Respondent Factum. Martin Sorensen, Law’98, Senior Director at Finance Canada, coached the team. This year’s case was based on the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Deans Knight Income Corp. v. Canada, which dealt with the potential application of the general anti-avoidance rule to a loss utilization transaction.

Federal Court of Appeal Justice David Stratas, Law’84, LLD’12, who presented the Best Overall Team award, poses with winners of the 2024 Donald G.H. Bowman National Tax Moot: Ari Derohanesian, Law’24, Jeff McPherson, Law’25, coach Martin Sorensen, Law’98, Liam Day, Law’25, and Yash Chavda, Law’24.

Robinson receives ‘royal’ recognition

Professor Darryl Robinson was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists in 2023. He received this recognition, one of the highest for Canadian academics, for his substantial contributions to international law, including transnational jurisprudence on crimes against humanity. His work aims to promote a more inclusive and humanistic system of international justice.

Before joining Queen’s in 2008, Robinson was an advisor at the International Criminal Court and a legal officer at Global Affairs Canada. He received the Antonio Cassese Prize for International Criminal Legal Studies from a body of global peers in 2013.

Robinson’s current research and advocacy seeks to advance a proposed crime of “ecocide” to address severe environmental wrongdoing, which he argues should be treated commensurately with the enduring harm it inﬂicts on present and future generations.

Professor Darryl Robinson, inducted in 2023 as a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists

LUKE KROEKER

Kimberly Murray, influential Indigenous scholar and advocate, joins faculty

Kimberly Murray, a Mohawk lawyer, researcher, teacher, and executive leader, has dedicated much of her legal career to promoting reconciliation between Indigenous and nonIndigenous people and advocating for Indigenous communities. In January, she will assume her new role as Queen’s National Scholar in Indigenous Legal Studies.

Dean Colleen M. Flood says, “Kimberly’s exceptional scholarship and advocacy will strengthen our Faculty’s expertise in Indigenous law, enhance our innovative teaching methods – including on-the-land learning – and advance our goal of becoming a leader in Indigenous knowledge while fulﬁlling the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action no. 28.”

Murray’s recent work has focused on the Survivors of Canada’s Indian Residential School system. She is completing her appointment as the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites. Following collaborative consultations with Indigenous leaders, communities, Survivors, families, and experts, she will ﬁle a ﬁnal report this fall with federal Justice Minister Arif Virani, recommending a new federal legal framework to protect the graves and burial sites of Indigenous children who died at the institutions. Prior to this appointment, she was the Executive Lead for the Survivors’ Secretariat at the Six Nations of the Grand River, working to recover the missing children and unmarked burials at the Mohawk Institute.

From 2015 to 2022, Murray was Ontario’s ﬁrst Assistant Deputy Attorney General for Indigenous Justice, helping communities revitalize Indigenous laws and expand legal services and programs. She also chaired the Expert Panel on Policing in Indigenous Communities.

Earlier in her career, she was Executive Director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2010-2015), where she promoted reconciliation and ensured Survivors’ voices were heard. She also led Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto, appearing before all levels of court and conducting law reform.

Further, she has served on numerous boards, public committees, and councils; provided advocacy in high-proﬁle public

Federally appointed Independent Special Interlocutor Kimberly Murray presents “Sites of Truth, Sites of Conscience,” her July 2024 report on unmarked burials and mass graves of missing and disappeared Indigenous children in Canada, to Queen’s University community members in Grant Hall on Sept. 26.

inquiries; published numerous works, position papers and conference papers; taught law and undergraduate students; and been recognized with numerous awards.

Murray, a member of Kanehsatà:ke Mohawk Nation, holds an LLM and LLB from Osgoode, a BA from Carleton University, and an honorary LLD from the Law Society of Ontario.

Karton makes an award-winning case for clarifying ‘extricable error of law’

Professor Joshua Karton and three senior practitioners won the 2023 Vancouver International Arbitration Centre prize for arbitration publication of the year. Their article, “Arbitration Appeals on Questions of Law in Canada: Stop Extricating the Inextricable!”, addresses the proper scope of appeals from the decisions of arbitrators. The authors urge the Supreme Court of Canada to adopt a restrictive deﬁnition of “extricable errors of law,” consistent with the Ontario courts’ approach. A narrow scope of appeals is more consistent with SCC jurisprudence, better aligns with the spirit of arbitration, and provides more certainty to parties who contract for arbitration. The article was published in the Queen’s Lawbased Canadian Journal of Commercial Arbitration. Karton is the journal’s Managing Editor and Queen’s Law students serve on its editorial board.

Professor Joshua Karton (far right) and co-authors the Hon. Barry Leon, Joel Richler, and Lisa Munro, accept the 2023 Vancouver International Arbitration Centre prize for their article.

GARRETT

From the bookshelf and digital library: faculty members’ latest contributions in emerging areas

Professor Bita Amani co-edited The Elgar Companion to Intellectual Property and the Sustainable Development Goals (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2024). The book explores how intellectual property intersects with all 17 United Nations sustainable development goals, examining its impact on poverty, inequality, food security, the environment, health, and access to medicines. It highlights IP’s role in areas like trade, gender, disability rights, and green technologies. This resource is essential for academics, researchers, policy-makers, and regulators seeking to advance the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Adjunct faculty member Christa Bracci, Law’00, LLM’18, and law librarian Erica Friesen, have co-authored Legal Research Online: Information Seeking in the Digital Environment (eCampus Ontario Open Library, 2024). This open-source textbook offers a comprehensive strategy for managing the vast volume of legal information online. It provides students with practical frameworks, research tools, and techniques for effective legal research. The resource aims to enhance students’ proﬁciency in navigating the digital legal landscape and serves as a foundational guide for legal research.

Dean Colleen M. Flood’s co-edited book, Pandemics, Public Health, and the Regulation of Borders: Lessons from COVID-19 (Routledge, 2024), explores how the pandemic reshaped borders globally, with stricter controls at international, national, and local levels. The book analyzes whether strict border policies, like those in New Zealand and Australia, were effective, and examines the impact of these measures on vulnerable populations weighed against the public health beneﬁts of slowing disease transmission. This work is a key resource for academics, policy-makers, and public health planners addressing the complexities of border management in public health.

In The United Nations and the Question of Palestine (Cambridge, 202 3), Professor Ardi Imseis critically examines the UN’s handling of Palestine, revealing a gap between international law and UN action. The book broadly argues that the UN has failed to respect international law, subjecting Palestine and its people to a state of “international legal subalternity,” where justice is repeatedly promised but constantly withheld. Chapter 5 contributed to the International Court of Justice’s July 19 ruling that Israel’s occupation is unlawful, marking a major shift in the international law on the question of Palestine.

Professor Erik Knutsen’s Halsbury’s Laws of Canada – Insurance (LexisNexis, 2023) offers a concise overview of Canadian insurance law, essential for lawyers in all fields. The volume covers key topics including the regulation of insurance, policy interpretation, formation of insurance relationships, and the duties of insurers and policyholders. It also addresses various types of insurance, such as property, fire, liability, accident, sickness, life, and marine insurance. This resource is valuable for legal professionals seeking both a broad overview and specific answers in insurance law.

Professor Nicolas Lamp co-edited International Trade Law: A Casebook for a System in Crisis (Geneva Trade Platform, 2024), a free online resource. Created by four leading professors, the casebook aims to make international trade law accessible to all students, regardless of cost. Currently in open beta, it features 17 chapters, with four more to come. The book covers 21 modules, including key topics in international trade law, caselaw, and problems. Lamp contributed chapters on trade law perspectives, World Trade Organization agreements, customs duties, intellectual property, and trade and labour.

In Termination and Rescission of Agreements for the Purchase and Sale of Land (LexisNexis, 2023), Professor Michael Pratt provides comprehensive guidance on when parties can terminate or rescind real estate agreements.

The book is valuable to real estate lawyers, legal professionals, judges, academics, and law students across Canadian common law provinces.

Pratt won second place in the 2023 Walter Owen Book Prize, awarded by the Canadian Foundation for Legal Research, for his book’s signiﬁcant contribution to Canadian legal literature.

In Memoriam

Professor Emeritus Allan Manson

A highly respected expert on evidence law and sentencing and an award-winning teacher

Professor Emeritus Allan Manson, who taught at Queen’s Law for 39 years and contributed greatly to its national and international reputation, died on Aug. 19 at the age of 75.

A leading expert in Canadian evidence law and sentencing, Manson was highly respected by students and peers. He established prison law and sentencing as core elements of the law school curriculum and served as director of the Correctional Law Project (now Queen’s Prison Law Clinic) from 1979 to 1981, litigating key cases in the ﬁeld.

“Allan was more than a brilliant legal mind; he was a force for justice, equity, and compassion,” says Dean Colleen M. Flood. “His inﬂuence shaped generations of legal professionals. Allan’s legacy will continue to inspire us to strive for a more just and equitable society.”

Before Queen’s, Manson practised criminal law and served as Deputy Judge on the Yukon Territorial Court. He was also involved in the Canadian Bar Association’s Committee on Release and Imprisonment and led an Ontario Law Reform Commission study on the coroner system.

IMPORTANT UPDATES

Professor Erik Knutsen updated his co-authored, two-volume American treatise, Stempel & Knutsen On Insurance Coverage (4th ed., Wolters Kluewer).

Professor Darryl Robinson updated his co-authored textbook, An Introduction to International Criminal Law and Procedure (5th ed., Cambridge University Press), a market leader and one of the most globally trusted textbooks on this topic.

STAY CONNECTED

Website: law.queensu.ca

X: @queensulaw

Facebook: @queensulaw

Instagram: @queensulaw

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/ school/queen’slaw

He was a dynamic, much-loved teacher who won two Law Students’ Society teaching awards and was a key ﬁgure in the formation of the Queen’s University Faculty Association.

Read more about Professor Manson’s career in his faculty proﬁle, published in Queen's Law Reports 2016 following his retirement and available at law.queensu.ca/manson

Professor Alvin Cheung

An integral member of the Queen’s Law community and a scholar who specialized in authoritarianism and the rule of law

Professor Alvin Cheung, a New York University JSD graduate who joined Queen’s Law as a sessional instructor in 2020 and was appointed a faculty member in 2022, died on July 29 at age 38.

“Alvin was a brilliant scholar, committed to human rights, with a deep love for Hong Kong,” says Dean Colleen M. Flood. “His intelligence, integrity, and kindness inspired our community.”

A barrister in Hong Kong before entering academia, his inﬂuential research warned of the global rise in authoritarianism and its impact on common law systems.

He is survived by his wife, Professor Alyssa King, and their two children.

Professor Allan Manson, 1948-2024

Professor Alvin Cheung, 1986-2024

cultural icon Taylor Swift’s rapid rise in the entertainment industry has come with high-profile legal battles – which Queen’s Law JD students will investigate in a new course with Professor Mohamed Khimji in January 2025.

Taylor Swift’s impact on music law to be examined in new business law course

Queen’s Law is introducing a new seminar called Law (Taylor’s Version), which centres on Taylor Swift’s legal battles and influence on the entertainment industry. Swift’s dominance in pop music and her $2-billion Eras Tour, credited with boosting local economies, make her an ideal figure for study: her involvement in high-profile legal disputes provide rich course material from defamation to copyright, trademark infringement, privacy, and more.

Professor Mohamed Khimji, who developed the course, highlights the significance of Swift’s career in modern music law. “From removing her music from Spotify to re-recording her first six albums and protecting her name from unauthorized commercial use, Taylor Swift’s dealings with the law reflect a rapidly evolving business law landscape.”

Upper-year students will attend the ﬁrst offering of this course in the winter 2025 term.

Castle program moves to Berlin, adds field study sites

While Bader College in East Sussex, U.K., undergoes renovations, the spring term International Law Programs took ﬂight from another European city: Berlin, Germany. After three weeks of classes and guest lectures in Kingston in May, 51 students studying international business law or public international law travelled to Berlin’s Bard College, their home base for ﬁve weeks. The program included the traditional action-packed week of professional development and networking events in Paris or The Hague and Geneva, where the students visited organizations including the World Trade Organization, the International Criminal Court, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The Berlin location provided new ﬁeld study opportunities, including a guided tour of the Memorium Nuremberg Trials, with a visit to historic courtroom 600, site of the ﬁrst international war crimes tribunal.

International Law students with Professor Ardi Imseis (second row, right), International Law Programs Academic Director; Gillian Ready (3rd row left), ILP Program Director; and Professor Mark Walters (back row), learn about the first international war crimes tribunal while seated inside the courtroom at the Memorium Nuremberg Trials.

BRIAN

Global

Public

Total eclipse over Kingston: A law student’s reflection

On April 8, Kingston experienced a rare celestial event: a total solar eclipse when it fell within the path of totality for the ﬁrst time in 375 years. Sinead Dunne, then a third-year student, captured the moment the moon fully obscured the sun, while her Law’24 classmate Mia Rakoff observed the eclipse in awe.

“We watched with other students in a friend’s backyard near Skeleton Park,” says Dunne. Excitement built as they waited for the sky to go dark. “We kept jumping up to check the progress.”

One unexpected highlight was a disco ball in the yard. “Instead of the usual round reﬂections, it tracked the eclipse’s progress, casting crescent-shaped lights as it approached totality,” Dunne recalls. As darkness grew, so did the chill in the air. “It got colder than I expected.” Birds reacted too. “Five minutes before totality, two birds swooped close to us, screeching. During totality, every bird in the city seemed to start singing,” adds Dunne.

Two minutes before before full darkness fell, the group moved to the street for a better view of the “sunset effect ” along the horizon. “There was an excited, jittery energy,” Dunne says. “When totality hit, we were shouting, a little in disbelief. You could hear other people around town doing the same – it felt very communal.”

For Dunne and her third-year classmates, the experience was a memorable end to their time at Queen’s. “It was a special moment to share together, especially with exams around the corner,” she says. “It got bright again so quickly, like ﬂipping a switch – I knew it would be special, but it really surpassed my expectations.”

Mia Rakoff, Law’24, watches the oncein-a-lifetime solar eclipse outside her student house in Kingston, along the path of totality.

BLSA-Queen’s members show off the Small Chapter of the Year Award they received from the Black Law Students’ Association of Canada at a gala held at Toronto’s Westin Harbour Castle during Black Histories and Futures Month in February. In addition, Uche Umolu, Law’25 (bottom row, far right), has been appointed BLSA Canada’s Director of Sponsorship.

Black Law Students’ Association of Canada recognizes its Queen’s chapter with award and executive appointment

The Queen’s Chapter of the Black Law Students’ Association of Canada won the 2024 Small Chapter of the Year Award for outstanding service to its members and community. The award was presented to 23 members attending the BLSA National Conference Awards Gala on Feb. 17 in Toronto.

“We are overjoyed!” said Uche Umolu, Law’25, BLSAQueen’s President, 2022-2024 “Our team has worked hard to grow the chapter, tripling membership, and strengthening ties with the Faculty.”

The chapter was recognized for its pre- and post-secondary outreach, organizing social and career events, mentoring ﬁrstyear students, and hosting a successful Beyoncé Trivia Night fundraiser. “Black people at Queen’s Law are thriving,” Umolu noted, expressing hope that this award will inspire more Black leaders to join Queen’s Law. In April, Umolu was appointed BLSA Canada’s Director of Sponsorship, tasked with developing and managing sponsorship strategies to meet revenue goals for events like the national conference and moot. She’s also responsible for maintaining relationships with partners and sponsors. “Working with BLSA Canada chapters, I’m building connections with Black law students across the country and gathering resources to support our mission,” says Umolu, focusing on helping Black law and pre-law students.

SINEAD

Creating and holding space for those who come after her

Abigail (Abby) Green, a Mohawk Master of Laws candidate and Supreme Court of Canada clerk, hopes to break new ground in

Indigenous law research and practice

BY NANCY DORRANCE

When LLM candidate Abigail Green (Artsci’19) was growing up in Ottawa, her family encouraged her to “always try hard and be my best,” recalls the 26year-old member of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte.

Perseverance paid o ff for Green, recipient of a provincial scholarship for her graduate studies at Queen’s. Last March, doing course work at her Kingston home, she received a phone call from Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) Justice Michelle O’Bonsawin to offer her a 2025-2026 clerkship.

“I had to hold back my tears while I talked to her, and then immediately started crying and called my mom,” says Green with a laugh.

Green’s grandmother had once worked as a legal assistant. “She dreamed of having a lawyer in the family, and I took on that role,” she notes. “Now that my younger sister has started law school, she’ll get double her wish!”

Although no law classes were o ff ered at her high school, Green was able to take two courses – Introduction to Canadian Law and Aboriginal Law – through Queen’s University’s undergraduate Certiﬁcate in Law program while completing her BSc in environmental science. When she was about to graduate, she recalls,

“I knew that I wanted to have more tools to effect change.”

Next, exploring her interest in a specialized area of law at the University of Ottawa, she had a realization. “The more courses I took in environmental law, the more I recognized its connection to both Aboriginal law and Indigenous law,” says Green. “I was continually ﬁnding ways to explore this intersection of knowledge … and that’s when my interest really blossomed.”

Before Abigail Green began clerking for the Supreme Court of Canada’s first Indigenous justice, she completed her LLM thesis on Indigenous legal research methodologies and pedagogical practices, aiming to lift them “to a level of equal legitimacy with Western knowledge systems” in academia.

After earning her JD in 2022, she clerked at the Federal Court for Justice Paul Favel, who remains a supportive mentor. He and former uOttawa Professor Danielle Lussier encouraged Green to apply for an SCC clerkship in 2023 – and then to re-apply this past January.

Lussier’s move to Kingston in 2022 prompted Green to choose Queen’s for her LLM in Indigenous law, under two cosupervisors: Professor Lindsay Borrows, and Lussier, now Chair in Indigenous Knowledges and Perspectives with Queen’s Languages, Literatures and Cultures department.

In June, Green’s year of researching and writing for Justice O’Bonsawin, Canada’s ﬁrst Indigenous Supreme Court justice, was bumped up to begin in August 2024. She says: “I’m excited and honoured for the opportunity to work on complex questions

“I’m excited and honoured for the opportunity to work on complex questions of national importance with Supreme Court of Canada Justice Michelle O’Bonsawin.”

of national importance with her.” Back when Green clerked at the Federal Court, she recalls attending O’Bonsawin’s question-and-answer sessions on Parliament Hill with members of Parliament and senators.

However, developing her master’s thesis on Indigenous legal research methodologies and pedagogies remained Green’s top priority until she submitted it in mid-July. “I think this is an important topic because Indigenous research methodologies have long been dismissed in Western academia,” she says. One of those methods – beadwork – was incorporated into a doctoral thesis for the ﬁrst time in Canada by Lussier in 2021. Green hopes to continue breaking new ground in this area.

“By adopting an Indigenous research paradigm, my thesis work is necessarily guided by respect, reciprocity, and relationality,” she notes. “It also has to do with reclaiming knowledge that was harmed through colonization and assimilation. Sitting in language circles and learning beading techniques that are so central to my Nation is reclaiming space … lifting our knowledge systems to a level of equal legitimacy with Western knowledge systems.”

Highlights of Green’s time at Queen’s Law include “working with amazing faculty like professors Borrows and Lussier,

Oct. 7, 2023: LLM candidate Abby Green, Professor Danielle Lussier, and PhD candidate Mary McPherson co-presented “Beading Across the Royal Proclamation, 1763” at the Treatied Spaces Research Group symposium held at Queen’s University in the Donald Gordon Centre.

who provide a different perspective and new learning opportunities,” she says. As well, support from Stacia Loft, Law’20, Director of Indigenous Initiatives & Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity Programs at Queen’s Law, and other Indigenous law students, have been enriching her Queen’s experience.

Participating in conferences has been another high point. Last October she, Lussier, and PhD candidate Mary McPherson spoke at the “Connected Nations: Indigenous Rights and the Royal Proclamation of 1763” event held at Queen’s , hosted by the Treatied Spaces Research Group that’s based at the University of Hull in England. The three scholars also presented at the Queen’s Conference on Indigenous Reconciliation in early 2024

Green’s vision for the future includes both practising Indigenous law and obtaining a PhD based on the legal research methodologies she has explored in her LLM. She credits her community and mentors for their guidance and motivation along every step of her journey.

Noting that “Indigenous people historically have been excluded from these academic and legal spaces,” she adds: “It is an honour and a responsibility to create and hold the space for those who come after me.”

Explore Queen’s graduate degrees in law

Would you like to pursue an advanced legal education tailored to your academic and professional goals? Are you interested in gaining knowledge from leading legal scholars and participating in cutting-edge research groups and programs?

Then learn about the Queen’s Law LLM and PhD programs at law.queensu.ca/ admissions/graduate

Remedies for the health-care crisis

Legal, medical, and policy experts share insights and prescriptions

BY MARK WITTEN

On the 40th anniversary of the Canada Health Act (CHA) this past spring, several interrelated health crises raised an urgent question: How can law, regulatory, and policy reforms improve health-care quality and access for Canadians –and people around the world?

Nearly seven million Canadian adults are without a family doctor or other access to primary care. Canada’s drug prices are the third highest among the 38 member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). One in ﬁve Canadians have no insurance to cover prescription drug costs. Many wait months or years for surgery, while others spend countless hours in hospital emergency rooms before seeing a physician. The COVID-19 pandemic has intensiﬁed these problems, while also exposing the huge health vulnerabilities and unequal distribution of health-related harms within Canada and globally.

In this multi-segment feature, ﬁve leaders – Queen’s Law Dean Colleen M. Flood, Queen’s Health Sciences Dean Jane Philpott MD, plus three prominent law school alumni with a range of critical perspectives – share expertise and insights on pressing national, provincial, and international issues affecting health care today.

Guaranteeing everyone has a place to go for primary, dental, and drug care

Health law and regulations have a critically important role to play in improving many aspects of health care for Canadians.

Colleen M. Flood, Dean of Law, one of Canada’s leading scholars in health law and policy, says that legal reform is urgently needed to address the crisis in access to health care. “When the Canada Health Act was frozen in place 40 years ago, protection against having to pay out of pocket for hospital and physician services was key. Now, prescription drugs, and soon, artiﬁcial intelligence tools, will rival those services as an expense. Moreover, the CHA doesn’t provide any real detail on what reasonable access should mean in terms of primary care or wait times for other kinds of treatment. The CHA needs to be substantially revised, or new legislation is required to provide real standards for access to care for Canadians.”

Jane Philpott, MD, Dean of Health Sciences, focuses on the primary care crisis in Health for All: A Doctor’s Prescription for a

“I propose a Canada Primary Care Act that would involve the federal and provincial governments working together to provide every Canadian with access to a primary care team within 30 minutes of their home or work.”

Jane Philpott, MD, Dean of Health Sciences

Healthier Canada (Penguin Random House Canada, 2024). Her bestselling book proposes a transformative, healthequity-based legislative solution to give every Canadian the legal right to access a primary care home. Based on speciﬁc community needs, homes would be staffed by a team that includes doctors, nurse practitioners, nurses, and other workers – such as physiotherapists, occupational therapists, physician assistants, midwives, social workers, dietitians, pharmacists, and community paramedics. “The proposed Canada Primary Care Act would involve the federal and provincial governments working together to provide every Canadian with access to a primary care team – within 30 minutes of their home or work – just as access to public school is available to every child,” she says. “Think of this proposal as a sister to the Canada Health Act.”

Co-operative federalism is crucial to make reasonable access a reality for all, says Dean Philpott, who envisions the federal government offering the provinces conditional funding with the incentive and obligation that they provide access to primary care services to each resident, while allowing regional ﬂexibility. “We simply don’t have enough family doctors to provide one-to-one care to everyone in this country,” she says. “We know from models in other countries that team-based approaches can provide high-quality care and deliver it more widely and efficiently than the traditional physician-based model.”

Canada could apply lessons learned from the bold legislative initiatives of other countries, such as Norway. “Its federal Public Health Act legislated a right to primary care, and now 99 per cent of residents have access,” she notes. “Norwegians have better health outcomes than Canadians and they spend less on health per capita. Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Britain each provide over 95 per cent access to residents, and Canadians can and should enjoy this level of access.”

Colleen M. Flood, Dean, Queen’s Law; team lead, Machine M.D: The Legal Governance of Health AI; founding director, Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics; former Research Chair in Health Law and Policy BERNARD

Philpott hopes that the big idea proposed in her book will be a catalyst for change. “People latch onto the metaphor of universal access to public education. It offers a framework to imagine what’s possible in transforming and building a primary care system on a team-based model,” she says. “Political will gets built on public will: the more people who say, ‘This is what we want,’ the more likely the idea will be implemented.”

Flood, for her part, envisions innovative and creative methods for the federal government to address health care access issues. For instance, the recently announced Canadian Dental Care Plan does not involve transferring funds to the provinces in exchange for their co-operation. Instead, it directly insures low-income children, seniors, and individuals with disabilities through a third-party payer. “This approach heralds a new way to address the traditionally contentious relationship between the federal and provincial governments in health care,” Flood says, “ensuring that one level of government – in this case, the federal government – is directly accountable for the delivery of the program.”

In contrast, she notes, pharmacare has been promised for years, but only small steps have been taken. “Sadly, Canada stands out among developed countries for not including prescription drugs within its basic health-care beneﬁts. We pay a lot for drugs in Canada and still many people are uninsured – for people with diabetes, for instance, the results

are scary in terms of avoidable deaths and associated morbidities.” Flood cites research published in the American Diabetes Association’s journal Diabetes Care, which shows people with diabetes in Ontario under 65 who were not insured had signiﬁcantly higher death rates than those over 65 whose medications were covered.

Globally, unequal access to life-saving vaccines was a huge issue early in the pandemic. Wealthy countries, with about 20 per cent of the world’s population, stockpiled 60 per cent of the vaccine supply, leaving billions of people in poorer countries unprotected. Obijiofor Aginam, LLM’98, is a global health expert recently appointed Director of the United Nations Educational, Scientiﬁc and Cultural Organization’s Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development. He served on the World Health Organization (WHO) Review Committee regarding amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) in 2005, and also on recent revisions ﬁnalized at the World Health Assembly in Geneva.

He’s encouraged that on June 1, WHO member countries agreed by consensus to amend the IHR to help developing countries gain better access to ﬁnancing and medical products during global health emergencies. “We need strong and effective global health governance instruments, such as the recently modernized IHR, and hopefully an international pandemic treaty by the end of the year, to compel and

Jane Philpott, MD, Dean, Queen’s Health Sciences; Chair, Primary Care Action Team, Government of Ontario (effective Dec. 1); CEO, Southeastern Ontario Academic Medical Organization; former federal Minister of Health.

Obijiofor Aginam, LLM’98, Director, UNESCO-MGIEP, New Delhi; former Deputy Director & Head of Governance for Global Health, United Nations University-IIGH; and Professor of Law & Legal Studies, Carleton University

incentivize individual nations to act rapidly, responsibly, and collectively in a world where microbes don’t need passports and an outbreak in one country affects all countries.”

Aginam’s prescient book, Global Health Governance: International Law and Public Health in a Divided World (University of Toronto Press, 2005), describes the mutual vulnerability of developed and developing countries to emerging infectious diseases. He opens with a poignant personal story. His mother gave birth to him on a highway outside a rural village during the Nigerian civil war in the late 1960s. His parents had to walk to the nearest medical clinic, a 20-minute drive away, due to gasoline shortages. “My father, a teacher, became my mother’s emergency midwife, nurse, and gynecologist,” he writes. “I look around the world today and see many women in my mother’s situation – and that scenario is a microcosm of the health divide between the developed and developing worlds.”

Deans Flood and Philpott, with three other academics, coedited another book that calls for equity in the global response to pandemics: Vulnerable: The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19 (University of Ottawa Press, 2020, open access at law.queensu.ca/vulnerable). “We gathered contributions from 69 authors across different disciplines to offer guidance on legal, ethical, and policy responses to the unequal distribution of harms within Canada and across the world, and the vulnerabilities for different groups and the interconnectedness that the pandemic made visible,” says Flood.

AI tools can help transform health care –

but only if the right regulation is in

place

Artiﬁcial intelligence (AI) is being applied to health care at breakneck speed. Emerging tools have the potential to improve quality, efficiency, and access to health care for patients, helping track patient data, triage care, improve diagnostic accuracy, reduce medical errors, tailor treatment plans, read medical images, and prepare referral letters for specialists. “The AI health space is on ﬁre in terms of innovation, and the potential for improvement is enormous,” says Dean Flood. “To fully realize this potential, however, Canada urgently needs to radically change how it regulates medical devices to ensure AI is deployed safely.”

Last February at Queen’s Law, Deans Flood and Philpott led a panel discussion, “Can AI Cure the Primary Care Crisis?” One solution discussed was AI Scribe, a tool that automatically summarizes or transcribes conversations between a doctor and patient, with patient consent. “Family doctors spend an average of 19 hours a week ﬁlling out forms and doing other administrative work,” Flood says. “If tools like AI

“We need a paradigm shift in thinking about the regulation of health AI: not just on or off, green light or red light, but amber all the time.”

Colleen M. Flood, Dean of Law

Scribe could liberate physicians from even half of that, it would free up another day to see more patients.” She notes that the Ontario Medical Association has partnered with the Ontario government on a pilot project with over 150 primary care doctors to test it.

Flood, team lead for Machine M.D. – a multidisciplinary research project funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to investigate the law, ethics, beneﬁts, and risks in health-related AI – has collaborated with multiple Canadian innovators who develop AI tools for complex health-care tasks. One is Zachary Kaminsky from The Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre, who developed a suicide prevention app by mining publicly available Twitter data. “The app can predict, using text analysis, a patient’s heightened suicide risk,” explains Flood.” Another innovator’s triage tool uses big data to ﬁgure out which patients arriving at Toronto’s SickKids Hospital should be taken directly for an X-ray. “If a child has fallen from a climbing frame, the tool can determine with nearly 100 per cent accuracy whether the child has a broken arm and should be X-rayed immediately, instead of waiting for hours in the emergency room.”

Other case studies on innovations examined by Machine M.D. include an intelligent, powered wheelchair and an OR Black Box, designed to improve surgical quality and efficiency and reduce errors in the operating room. Through these case studies and comparative legal studies, Flood has partnered with scholars in Canada, Brazil, France, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, and United States, to analyze existing legal governance of AI in health care and develop proposals to reform laws as needed. For AI tools to move the needle on improving health care, they must be safe.

“I’m an AI optimist, but health AI risks are real,” Flood says. One such risk is algorithmic bias. “If AI is trained on data that primarily reﬂects one segment of the population, such as certain demographic groups, it may not accurately detect health conditions across all individuals,” Flood notes. “For instance, this could lead to AI missing skin cancer lesions on people with different skin characteristics. Such biases could potentially result in errors in diagnosing or treating various medical conditions.”

Flood

and Queen’s Health Sciences

held a Feb. 25 panel, “The Crisis in Primary Care: Is Artificial Intelligence the Cure?” Watch what they and other health and artificial intelligence experts – Queen’s Health Sciences Dr. Michael Green, SickKids Dr. Devin Singh, and Queen’s Law Professor

– had to say about the opportunities and risks at law.queensu.ca/AIprimarycare

AI health tools pose other dangers. “In the past our laws have mainly relied on informed consent and ensuring health data can’t be traced to an individual patient to protect their privacy, but AI can re-identify the patient relatively easily,” explains Flood. As well, when patients give informed consent to share personal health information, there’s a risk the data will be unknowingly shared outside their circle of care. “Physicians may not know how the data is being used, or perhaps they signed contracts with the AI developer or their hospital that permit it to be divulged. Third parties want that

“To promote and protect global health, every country should look at what it can do to improve public health by supporting more effective International Health Regulations and a robust pandemic treaty.”

Obijiofor Aginam, LLM’98

data because they can sell it very proﬁtably without patients necessarily knowing.”

To inform adaptive regulation of health-related AI within Canada – and globally – relevant, timely evidence is critical. Flood is pioneering work that would compare adaptive regulatory approaches to Australia, Brazil, Europe, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, and the United States. As deﬁned by most regulators today, a medical device includes not only hardware like insulin pumps or artiﬁcial heart valves, but also software alone, or combinations of both – such as a pacemaker with AI software that can predict a heart attack, or a wearable device that uses AI to help people with diabetes better control their blood sugar and predict any dangerous swings.

“Health Canada’s job is to protect patients and clinicians against these risks,” says Flood. “Our research aims to create legal and policy options for optimal governance of AI in health care that could inform optimal regulation.” An adaptive approach with strong post-market oversight is critical, she adds. “Machine learning tools are designed to evolve and overseeing them calls for a different regulatory mindset. We need a paradigm shift in thinking about the regulation of health AI: not just on or off, green light or red light, but amber all the time.”

Some of the answers in building adaptive, “amber” safeguards may reside in AI itself, such as techno-surveillance,

Queen’s Law Dean Colleen M.

(middle)

Dean Jane Philpott MD (far left)

Samuel Dahan

LISA GRAHAM

which could pick up small signals across large populations that might suggest, if there were concerns in different places across the country, that an issue warranted fuller investigation.

Developing the best regulation for Canada also depends on getting buy in from AI innovators. “Historically they’ve been very concerned about overregulation, regulation costs, and unneeded bureaucratic red tape,” Flood says. “We’re trying to persuade innovators that the right regulation is truly in their best interests. Because if bad health AI is approved and patients are harmed, there will be calls for heavier regulation, which might impede the industry and cause a loss of trust with patients and clinicians.”

Strong local and global health accords needed to bridge deep, widening health divides

Early in the pandemic, hoarding of COVID-19 vaccines by richer countries, including Canada, led to an estimated 1.3 million additional deaths in poorer countries by the end of 2021, as reported in Nature Medicine. “Another unintended

Teresa Buchanan, Law’07, Assistant Deputy Minister (Physician and Provider Services), Ontario Ministry of Health; former Manager, Policy Program Development, Long-Term Care Home Renewal Branch, OMH

“Team-based care will improve primary care access, leverage the practice scope of different types of health care professionals, and enable patients to get the type of care they need.”

Teresa Buchanan, Law’07

consequence of vaccine apartheid was to create more opportunities for SARS-CoV-2 to mutate in unvaccinated people into more transmissible vaccine-resistant variants, such as Omicron,” says Obijiofor Aginam, who served on the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations (IHR) Expert Review Committee. “If you leave out half the world’s population, the other half will still be potentially vulnerable as a result. Enlightened self-interest should compel all countries to contribute their respective skills, strengths, and capacities towards the promotion and protection of health everywhere in an interdependent world.”

For decades the IHR have been the only near-universal legal instrument for global health protection, designed to lead a public health response to the international spread of disease for 194 WHO member countries. Members are expected to report to WHO disease outbreaks with the “potential to cause a public health emergency of international concern,” and any infection control measures taken. When the pandemic hit, these reporting limitations became clear. “Many countries failed to notify WHO and report immediately and accurately on COVID-19 outbreaks and infection control measures,” Aginam notes. “If more countries had complied with their global health responsibilities, it could have prevented or limited the pandemic’s scope.”

Aginam emphasizes that the recently approved IHR amendments are designed to reward and encourage rapid, accurate, and comprehensive reporting of disease outbreaks and sharing of relevant scientiﬁc data. Unfortunately, after South Africa reported the Omicron variant and shared its genomic sequencing worldwide, many high-income countries imposed ﬂight bans on its citizens. “South Africa was punished rather than rewarded for good behaviour, which discouraged other countries from being open and transparent,” he says.

Since late 2021, global political and health leaders have been negotiating an international pandemic treaty, intended to give WHO the power to facilitate universal and equitable access to affordable vaccines, medicines, and diagnostics for

future pandemics. Negotiators, however, failed to reach a consensus on the text by the self-imposed deadline of May 27 – World Health Assembly opening day – and now WHO member countries have set a new deadline to agree on a treaty by the end of 2024 Aginam says a strong pandemic treaty could help avert attempts by powerful countries to prevent vaccine access for vulnerable populations. “To promote and protect global health, every country, including Canada, should look at what it can do to improve public health domestically and internationally by supporting more effective IHR regulations and a robust pandemic treaty.”

Keeping health laws and regulations truly up to date is essential, says Teresa Buchanan, Law’07, Assistant Deputy Minister (Physician and Provider Services), Ontario Ministry of Health. “Being nimble in adapting legislation, regulations, and policy to changing issues and needs in health care is critical to maintain the conﬁdence and trust of patients and clinicians, and to improve access and quality of care.”

For example, Ontario’s Connecting Care Act, 2019, was the ﬁrst in a series of legal, regulatory, and policy changes brought in to build a better, more integrated health system in the province. Since then, Ontario has launched Your Health: A Plan for Connected and Convenient Care, and most recently, established Ontario Health at Home. “The overall objective of these initiatives is to better connect and coordinate the care that people need,” says Buchanan.

In the 2024 Ontario budget, a total investment of $546 million over three years was announced to help connect 600,000 people to interprofessional primary care teams. While not as ambitious as Dean Philpott’s proposed Canada Primary Care Act, this does provide a large, real-world test of the model’s beneﬁts and feasibility in Canada’s most populous province. “Team-based care will improve primary care access for Ontarians with the greatest need,” says Buchanan. “It also leverages the practice scope of different health care professionals and enables patients to get the type of care they need through diverse models, including physician- and nurse-practitioner-led clinics, as well as community health centres.”

“Post-market surveillance of new medicines and health products is critical to protect patients, recognizing that advanced products continue to evolve after being approved.”

David K. Edwards, Law’89

Canada’s drug regulator pivots to speed access and ensure safety for innovative medicines and products

Canada’s Food and Drugs Act and its detailed regulations aim to protect consumers from unsafe products and deceptions, while also encouraging the development of safe and effective new drugs. The FDA regulates four classes of products: drugs, medical devices, food, and cosmetics. As scientiﬁc and technological advances accelerate the pace of change, Health Canada has modernized the FDA and customized regulatory requirements for approving innovative health products. These include gene and cell therapies, personalized cancer vaccines, and tissue-engineered, digital-health, bio-printed, and nanotechnology-based products.

“There have been major amendments to the FDA,” says David K. Edwards, Law’89, General Counsel, Health Canada, Legal Services Unit, Department of Justice. “The FDA created

David K. Edwards, Law’89, General Counsel, Health Canada Legal Services Unit, Department of Justice; author, The Regulation of Drugs in Canada (Irwin Law, 2024)

What’s happening in health law at Queen’s?

r Professor Erik Knutsen, winner of Queen’s University’s top teaching award, teaches Health Law. His students tackle the latest challenges, such as the battle between public and private health care, medical malpractice, liability for pharmaceutical or medical device harms, who can consent to medical treatment for others, regulating health-care professionals, and medical aid in dying.

r Professor Lynne Hanson, LLM’93 (Artsci’81, MA’85), teaches Mental Health Law, which explores the protection of the rights of those who suffer from a mental illness, focusing on recent case law that holds the government accountable for a lack of access to treatment and other resources.

r John McIntyre, Law’14, principal lawyer with McIntyre Szabo PC, a health law boutique he co-founded, returned in 2023 to teach Public Health Law as an adjunct lecturer. In this new seminar, students examine how health laws affect our daily lives by grappling with real-life issues. This fall, he is co-teaching the course with Victoria Cistrone, Law’17 (Artsci’14), legal counsel with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.

r Queen’s Disability and Mental Health Law Club promotes wellness and mental well-being among law students and brings attention to the prevalence of mental illness and disability within the profession.

r Queen’s Health Law Club provides students with opportunities to expand their knowledge and build networks in the field.

r Law Dean Colleen M. Flood and Health Sciences

Dean Jane Philpott marked the 40th anniversary of the Canada Health Act by participating in a webinar with the Canadian Health Coalition. Watch their discussion on the principle of accessibility found in the act at law.queensu.ca/CHA

a new regulatory framework, the Advanced Therapeutic Product Pathway that gives regulators more ﬂexibility in how they assess the risks and beneﬁts of therapeutics, which standard drug regulations weren’t designed to handle.” Edwards adds, “The goal is to broaden and speed up access to new medicines, including potentially life-saving treatments, while ensuring patient safety.”

Cell-based cancer therapies, for example, are prepared in personalized doses at the point of care, rather than being mass manufactured in a factory, and given to a speciﬁc patient using their own immune cells. “ The pathway’s ﬂexibility allows regulators to permit the sale of therapeutics, such as chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy, that would have been hard to authorize through traditional Phase 3 clinical trial evidence. The regulator needs to be able to approve and allow access to medicines customized to patients,” explains Edwards. “If you delay access to new therapeutic products that are safe and more effective than existing therapies, it harms patient health.”

The new Advanced Therapeutic Product (ATP) framework also permits Health Canada to impose terms and conditions for each advanced product licensed for sale – the machine learning health tools Dean Flood discusses on pages 16-17, for example – which enables increased post-market surveillance to monitor safety and effectiveness. “The terms and conditions allow regulators to suspend or revoke licenses, if deemed necessary, and pull products from the market,” says Edwards, a lawyer with over two decades of experience advising officials in Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada on matters relating to FDA administration, enforcement, and modernization.

Edwards has co-written a new book on these topics, The Regulation of Drugs in Canada: The Food and Drugs Act and Related Intellectual Property Regimes (Irwin Law, 2024) – see page 33 for details. As health product rules become more agile and ﬂexible, it ’s a challenge for regulators to reconcile the often-competing goals of expediting access to new medicines and health products while ensuring they’re safe and effective. “Post-market surveillance is critical to protect patients, recognizing that advanced products, such as cell therapies and AI-powered medical diagnostics, continue to evolve after being approved,” he says.

Vanessa’s Law, the Protecting Canadians from Unsafe Drugs Act, 2014, was an early, inﬂuential regulatory measure that strengthened Health Canada’s ability to monitor product safety and recall unsafe products, Edwards notes. The catalyst for Vanessa’s Law was the tragic death of 15-year-old Vanessa Young – daughter of former MP Terence Young – from cardiac arrhythmia in 2000, after she took an acid reﬂux drug, Prepulsid. These FDA amendments required hospitals to report all serious adverse drug reactions and medical device incidents to Health Canada within 30 days.

“We need to revolutionize

our legal and regulatory approaches to health care from tiered, top-

down approaches to more fluid, evidence-based, risk-calibrated approaches that evolve and stay current over time and place.”

Colleen M. Flood, Dean of Law

The intellectual property framework for drug regulation, Edwards says, plays an important role. For example, it regulates competition between brand-name manufacturers, the ﬁrst to bring a drug to market at higher prices and to obtain patents, and generic or biosimilar manufacturers, which make copies at lower prices. “The regulator is trying to weigh innovation, affordability, and access to medicines,” he says. “The balance between cost-effectiveness and innovation is delicate: we want patients to have greater access to safe and effective new medicines, while keeping health-care costs affordable.”

Looking ahead

It’s clear that as quantum leaps in AI technology continue, there’s an urgent need to rethink approaches not only to AI medical devices, but also to primary care, essential medicines, dental care, and outbreaks of new and emerging infectious diseases if we’re to succeed in improving health-care access, quality, efficiency, and equity for Canadians – and globally.

Dean Flood summarizes what’s required now: “We need to revolutionize our legal and regulatory approaches to health care from tiered, top-down approaches to more ﬂuid, evidence-based, risk-calibrated approaches that evolve and stay current over time and place,” she says. “Further, we need a renewed commitment to the Canada Health Act’s core principles of universality and equity, values that are deeply ingrained in Canadians, and an insistence that all Canadians deserve timely access to care.”

(Editor’s note: Dr. Jane Philpott was appointed Chair of the Government of Ontario’s new Primary Care Action Team, effective Dec. 1, just as this issue went to press.)

SAVE THE DATE

AI at Work – Rights, Risks, Opportunities

Reuters

19 Duncan St., Toronto

“AI and Work: Will There be Enough Left for Humans? If Not, What Then?”

Keynote public lecture by Professor Daniel Susskind of Oxford University and King’s College London, coauthor of the bestselling The Future of the Professions, and author of A World Without Work, described by The New York Times as “required reading for any potential presidential candidate thinking about the economy of the future”

Conference

Panels of leading AI and labour law experts on topics including algorithmic monitoring and privacy protection, access to justice in the workplace, employer decision-making, employee duties of care, and competent performance

Marcus-Matalon

on U.S. Law

Online

Presented by Akhil Reed Amar, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, a leading expert on the U.S. Constitution, and one of the most cited scholars of his generation by the U.S. Supreme Court

Invitations to these events and more will be posted on Queen’s Law social media channels and emailed to alumni. Alumni who wish to join our mailing list or update their email address/ Queen’s contact information can do so at https://apps.adv.queensu.ca/forms/biographic/

Faculty’s ﬁrst professional program – in legal AI – sparks new master classes for legal and non-legal participants

Following the success of its inaugural offering, Queen’s Law is planning more intensive, innovative primers to meet evolving professional needs in rapidly changing fields

BY LISA GRAHAM

Queen’s Law launched its Artificial Intelligence and Law Certificate in May to resounding approval. The virtual, week-long professional development program attracted people from a variety of backgrounds. Thirty participants gained career-enhancing insights into the governance of AI, legal compliance, and global collaboration.

“The overwhelmingly enthusiastic response to our ﬁrst dip into microcredential programming is very encouraging,” says Dean Colleen M. Flood. “It shows the immense value of providing professionals with practical knowledge and skills in an evolving society and marketplace – and underscores our Faculty’s ability to provide the unrivalled expertise of top legal scholars.”

Leading experts from Queen’s Law –including Flood, Professor Bita Amani, Professor and Con ﬂ ict Analytics Lab Director Samuel Dahan, and Research and Instruction Librarian Erica Friesen –and from other Ontario law schools, such as Professor Teresa Scassa of University of Ottawa – presented on pressing issues and emerging themes to give participants a deeper look at AI, law, and society.

engaging, and the delivery made complex topics accessible and interesting.” She and fellow participants learned how to use AI tools for legal research, and explored key concepts related to AI governance and regulation, intellectual property, data privacy, and the risks and opportunities that lie ahead in such areas as health law, administrative law, and human resources management.

Jean-Marc Leclerc, Law’98, a partner at Sotos Class Actions in Toronto, says the program was informative, providing a foundational look at legal and ethical frameworks. “As well, because AI is changing so quickly, we were given practical tools to evaluate beneﬁts and risks that can be applied to future developments and opportunities.”

“The AI and Law Certificate program equipped me with practical knowledge that I can immediately apply to make my practice more efficient.”

Pooja Misra, Law’12, Associate Senior Counsel, Litigation, Co-operators Group Ltd.

Erin Spicer-Bowland, Law’12, a sole practitioner and faculty member at Loyalist College in Belleville, Ont., says she was most impressed by the instructors. “They’re actively involved in informing Canada’s legal regulation on data security and the use of AI in the future. Some are even creating the software products that will change the daily practice of law. Their unique insights added incredible value to the learning experience.”

In addition, Spicer-Bowland says: “The content was very

Learning how to do such critical analysis will give a competitive advantage to participants like Pooja Misra, Law’1 2 , Associate Senior Counsel, Litigation, at Co-operators Group Ltd. in Guelph, Ont. “In-house counsel are frequently approached by companies introducing new AI tools for purchase. This program will allow me to better evaluate such tools for potential adoption within our department, and to avoid pitfalls such as algorithmic bias.”

That’s not the only beneﬁt, says Misra. “The AI and Law Certi ﬁ cate program equipped me with practical knowledge that I can immediately apply to make my practice more efficient. I learned, for instance, about several AI-based legal research tools that can streamline tasks such as drafting briefs and legal opinions.”

Queen’s Law designed the certiﬁcate program to be accessible for all professional backgrounds and designations, and to be applicable to all sectors. While most participants were legal

Queen’s Law will be offering the AI and Law Certificate again from December 9 to 13 and expects to announce its 2025 microcredential program offerings early next year. To be among the first to know and register for a spot, sign up for our Continuing Professional Development mailing list at lawprofessionalcertificates@queensu.ca – and also email us your ideas for new program topics of interest.

Professor Teresa Scassa, Canada Research Chair in Information Law and Policy at the University of Ottawa, teaches her course, “Keep it Secret/Keep it Safe: Privacy, Data Governance & AI,” to participants in the virtual AI and Law Certificate program that was offered by Queen’s Law during the last week of May.

practitioners, others included a provincial information and privacy commissioner. Learners came from law ﬁrms, government, and such industries as ﬁnancial services, media, engineering , and technology. As part of the program, they got to know each other and collaborate in breakout sessions.

“Small group exercises provided excellent opportunities to take AI tools for a spin to compare and contrast how they perform,” says Leclerc. “We learned about the unique and distinct perspectives each attendee brought to the analysis.”

Professionals completing the program receive an AI and Law Certiﬁcate from Queen’s Law. For those who practise law in Ontario, there’s a further beneﬁt: the program is eligible for continuing professional development (CPD) credits with the Law Society of Ontario, and exceeds the annual quota for professionalism and equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) hours. For his part, Leclerc says of his experience: “I’m very happy I attended to obtain an intensive and valuable primer on AI.”

other jurisdictions, and to a wider range of professions. Interested enrollees are encouraged to consult with their law society or professional accreditor.

“We’re exploring various ideas and areas of law where we can equip working professionals with the knowledge and skills they need to stay ahead in their careers.”

Dean Colleen M. Flood

Future iterations of the AI and Law Certiﬁcate – and new offerings now being planned – may be eligible for credits in

More CPD-eligible courses are coming

Flood says while legal AI “was an obvious choice for our initial topic since we have such tremendous in-house expertise in the area, which is transforming the practice of law, legal services delivery, and access to justice,” the Faculty’s scholars also have expertise to help professionals bridge theory and practice in other growing and changing ﬁelds.

To help plan future courses, she has appointed Professor Josh Karton to an associate deanship and is hiring an assistant dean to oversee the development of professional programs, as well as graduate studies. “We’re exploring various ideas and areas of law where we can equip working professionals with the knowledge and skills they need to stay ahead in their careers,” says Flood. “Stay tuned.”

Lawyer ‘ventures’ into innovation zone

Aliya Ramji, Law’07, directed her early interest in science and law into a unique company that provides tech startups with the legal and strategic business counsel they need to grow

BY PHIL GAUDREAU

Growing up watching Matlock, the American legal drama television series, Aliya Ramji wanted to be a criminal lawyer. She enrolled at Queen’s Law after completing undergraduate studies in genetics and biotechnology – the latter so she could read her own forensics reports.

During her JD studies, Ramji realized criminal law wasn’t her passion. But the genetics courses came in handy when she articled with a ﬁrm, working on pharmaceutical patent litigation.

Next, she had what she calls the “hardest and best” thing happen: she found herself without a job amid the 2008 recession. “I started my own consulting practice at that point, working for a number of different law ﬁrms and in house with whomever would give me work,” says Ramji, now a partner at McCarthy Tétrault LLP’s Toronto office.

As Ramji’s career continued to progress, she earned a master’s degree at New York University School of Law, worked in international trade, and began teaching undergraduate and JD students. Her science background again proved valuable when a medical startup, Figure 1, was expanding globally and needed her counsel. “We went from six to 196 countries in 13 months,” she says. “It was a hell of a ride.”

For Ramji this meant addressing issues around health-care privacy and data protection, consent, and novel areas of law like how to handle medical images in cyberspace. Her work involved managing 47 outside counsel and ensuring that Figure 1 adhered to the laws in the most stringent jurisdictions, including South Korea and the United States.

During that time, Ramji connected with a partner from McCarthy Tétrault LLP. “They had wanted to do something in the startup space for years,” she says. “I got a blank sheet of paper to design a program for startups the way I wanted to, and MT>Ventures is the culmination of that.”

MT>Ventures, a wholly owned division of McCarthy Tétrault that turned four in May, was borne speciﬁcally out of Ramji’s frustration with how law ﬁrms usually work with startups. Many take on large numbers of clients and focus mainly on legal matters, rather than on overall business health.

In contrast, MT>Ventures chooses no more than 15 new clients a year, and currently serves about 40. “We’re looking for companies with exceptional founders, with high growth, high-potential businesses that are keen to grow and expand beyond Canada,” Ramji says – and those in highly regulated industries and growing industries like artiﬁcial intelligence, climate change technology, or robotics. “Keeping our client list small means that I can wake up every morning thinking about how we can help our portfolio of clients grow.”

Instead of typical by-the-minute billing, clients pay a ﬁxed monthly amount to help them manage their costs. Ramji and her team – which includes partners and associates from the ﬁrm’s various offices throughout

McCarthy Tétrault LLP partner Aliya Ramji, Law’07, is co-founder and head of Toronto-based MT>Ventures, where she leads a team of lawyers and entrepreneurs who tailor legal and strategic business advice to a small number of high-potential tech startups.

Canada, as well as external strategic advisors – keep in touch through bimonthly check-in calls. Clients tell her they appreciate this, as it allows them to review challenges and opportunities with experienced and knowledgeable outside help.

Having access to skilled legal counsel at the early stage of a startup’s development is helpful in navigating complex regulatory environments, including spaces where the law doesn’t yet exist. But MT>Ventures aims to go beyond legal advice. Law firms often have many community connections that startups could benefit from, including potential clients and partners within the firm’s virtual Rolodex. It’s part of Ramji’s job to help create those internal and external connections and advocate for the startups.

“My goal is to create value for both the firm’s startup and non-startup clients. Startups will have a wish list of target clients. If our firm represents those companies, I’ll work with their relationship partner to encourage an introduction,” she says. “We’ve had some real success. Ideally the startups in our portfolio will grow faster than if they were trying to build connections solo, or while working with another firm that doesn’t think through the areas of collaboration for them.”

“I love

what

I

do.

There’s another angle to MT>Ventures: by building brand loyalty while these companies are in their early stages, the intent is to retain them as full McCarthy Tétrault clients throughout their life cycle.

Every day I have the privilege of working with visionary clients who are intelligent, motivated, and driven to make a difference in the world, and I get to be a part of that.”

Aliya Ramji, Law’07

In addition to her work with McCarthy Tétrault, Ramji is the chair-elect for the Ontario Chamber of Commerce board of directors, and she joined the Queen’s Law Dean’s Council of alumni advisors in fall of 2023.

“My hope is to help Queen’s lead new thinking about legal education and delivery,” she says. “It’s important we consider law in a practical sense, so new lawyers are equipped to hit the ground running when they are placed in di ffi cult situations. We’re training a new generation of lawyers to embrace and use technology, but we also need to ensure they know how and where to rely on their own smarts and moral compass.”

While Ramji may have known law was the profession for her from a young age, she’s had many turns in her career path along the way. As for the future, no one knows what exciting technologies and inventions could disrupt the legal sector, or the world of business, and face tomorrow’s lawyers.

“What exists when you graduate will be very different from what exists ﬁve years later,” she says. “The iPhone hadn’t come out when I graduated from law school. Seven years later, I went to work for a mobile-ﬁrst company [one that creates its website and apps for phones and tablets before adjusting them for bigger screens]. Your career path might not be what you expected and that’s ok – be open and you may be surprised at how incredible your career becomes.

“I love what I do,” she adds. “Every day I have the privilege of working with visionary clients who are intelligent, motivated, and driven to make a difference in the world, and I get to be a part of that. If I can continue doing this, I can’t imagine doing anything else right now.”

Trending sectors that need lawyers

Aliya Ramji, Law’07, co-founder and head of MT>Ventures, presents her top 3 list of sectors notable for their innovation and impact.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning:

Pioneering advancements in automation, data analysis, and personalized technology, are sweeping through sectors from health care to finance.

Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering:

Transformative developments in personalized medicine are revolutionizing health care with targeted therapies and innovative treatments.

Renewable Energy and Sustainability Technologies:

Critical innovations in solar and wind energy, battery storage, and smart grids address urgent energy needs and climate change. Additional advancements include carbon capture, green building, and sustainable manufacturing.

Says Ramji, “These sectors are driving technological progress and attracting significant investments. They’re also rich in intellectual property, data protection, cybersecurity, and commercialization issues for lawyers to sink their teeth into!”

Bringing cutting-edge practice skills from the real world to the classroom

Seasoned

legal professionals – often alumni like Law’89 grad Dhaman Kissoon and Law’84 grad Justice David Stratas – who teach as adjunct faculty offer insights, wisdom, and knowledge that

can’t

be found in any casebook

BY KEN CUTHBERTSON, LAW’83

He’s been doing the same “part-time job” for the past 34 years, and yet Dhaman Kissoon, Law’89, still savours the experience. In fact, he cherishes it. “I feel I am giving back and making a real difference. ”

During each fall term, Kissoon travels from his Etobicoke, Ont., office one day each week to teach an upper-year seminar course at his alma mater. He was one of 35 adjuncts – 32 lawyers and three judges – who taught at Queen’s Law in 2023-24. These seasoned counsellors have been playing a vital role at the law school since 1959-60 That's when “special lecturers” T.D. Slater and T.R. Wilcox taught courses in, respectively, real estate transactions and aspects of legal practice.

Adjuncts now complement the teaching roster of 35 full- and part-time faculty at Queen’s Law, which includes some of Canada’s brightest and most knowledgeable legal scholars, several of whom are internationally recognized.

“Our adjunct professors are respected experts in their specialized ﬁelds, often with advanced degrees, research track records, and extensive experience in practice,” says Dean Colleen M. Flood. “work at the cutting edge of their specialized ﬁelds and equip students with advanced skills that are essential for success in practice. As teachers, our adjuncts take great pride in educating the next generation of lawyers.”

Like Kissoon, many of the adjuncts who teach with indelible effect at Queen’s Law are highly dedicated, on the job for a decade or more. They offer focused courses in 10 subject areas, among them international law and health law, litigation/dispute resolution, legal theory, and corporate/ commercial law.

While Kissoon specializes in criminal law and immigration law in his own practice, the course he offers is Racism and Canadian Legal Culture. Born in Guyana, he has for many years been passionately concerned with racism in the legal profession – and in Canadian society in general.

“During my student days, my Law’89 classmate Ian Smith –who is now an Ontario Superior Court justice – and I did some research that looked at racism and the Canadian legal system,” Kissoon recalls. “When we graduated, then-Dean John Whyte asked if we would be interested in teaching a course based on what we had learned.”

The class, which they began teaching in 1990, was the ﬁrst of its kind offered in any Canadian law school. “Since then, a lot of other law schools have come on board. That said, Queen’s Law has always been a leader in this area, and I am pleased and honoured to still be teaching this course.”

Kissoon doesn’t lecture his students, but instead presents them with a problem, and then asks for help to solve it

"Our adjunct professors work at the cutting edge of their specialized fields and equip students with advanced skills that are essential for success in practice."

Dean Colleen M. Flood

collaboratively. “Students enjoy this approach,” he notes. “I wish I could say that with the passage of so many years, the topics we talk about are different. However, the reality is that while the case law has changed, the issues we are dealing with have not.”

The need for the Racism and Canadian Legal Culture course remains compelling. Not only does the material remain relevant and timely, but students enjoy Kissoon’s teaching. The proof is in the proverbial pudding: his course always has full enrolment, and he’s a four-time winner of a Stanley M. Corbett Award for Teaching Excellence, a prestigious honour that’s voted on by members of the Law Students’ Society.

“Professor Kissoon’s course reshaped my understanding of Canadian law ... and cultivated critical thinking and problemsolving skills that are essential for success in law and in the everyday world,” says Rashmi Kumar, Law’17, now an assistant Crown attorney in the Greater Toronto Area.

Such laudatory reviews of the adjunct faculty who teach at Queen’s Law have become so typical that they’re the rule rather than the exception. That’s certainly true where Justice David Stratas, Law’84, LLD’12, is concerned.

Stratas, who’s the winner of a record 10 faculty-wide teaching awards (including four Corbett Awards) as well as an H.R.S. Ryan Law Alumni Award of Distinction, began serving as an adjunct professor in fall 1994 Then a partner at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP – and later at Heenan Blaikie LLP – in Toronto, he was known as one of Canada’s most respected administrative law and constitutional law litigators.

Initially, he taught Advanced Constitutional Law (ﬁrst with former Dean John Whyte, Law’68, then with David Mullan, LLM’73, and then solo). Following his 2009 appointment to the bench of the Federal Court of Appeal, Stratas instead began offering a one-credit skills course in legal writing and advocacy, LAW 633, taught over just a couple of weekends in one term. One of the school’s most intensive offerings, it ’s also one of the most popular with students. Word has clearly gotten around; every year for the 15 years Stratas has taught the course, enrolment has been at the peak capacity of 110 students.

It’s easy to understand why. “David is practical. He’s erudite, and he’s a charming teacher,” says David Williams, Law’19, who served for a year as Stratas’s law clerk after graduating, and now practises with Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP in Toronto. “The course in legal writing sets a strong foundation, and David’s zeal for the subject inspires students to hone their craft for the rest of their lives. It certainly did that for me.”

For his part, Stratas says he finds teaching to be enormously rewarding and a fitting way to give back to the law school and to the legal profession. “I was the beneficiary of great sessional lecturers and professors when I was a law student. Serving as an adjunct professor gives me a chance to impart the same sort of information and insights that I was fortunate enough to receive.”

Dhaman Kissoon, Law’89, a criminal and immigration lawyer in Etobicoke, Ont., is teaching Racism and Canadian Legal Culture for the 35th consecutive year this fall at Queen’s Law, where he has won four teaching awards.

Justice David Stratas, Law’84, LLD’12, of the Federal Court of Appeal in Ottawa, will teach Writing and Written Advocacy again in winter 2025, which will be the 31st year of his record-setting, award-winning teaching career at Queen’s Law.

While Stratas is now 64 and could start thinking about becoming a supernumerary justice, or even retiring entirely, he has no intention of doing either. “As I get older and start to reduce my extracurricular activities, continuing to teach at Queen’s Law will always be high on my list of things that I want to keep doing. I’ll stay with it for as long as I’m needed.”

Stratas’s willingness to take – or rather to make – the time to teach at Queen’s Law isn’t simply because he enjoys doing so or because it affords him a break from the onerous demands of his work in Ottawa.

“Teaching is the honour of a lifetime for me. It’s wonderful to share my perspective, that of an outsider who’s been in the battles, who’s won and lost, and who has experienced a lot in his career – unequivocally for the betterment of the students who take my course,” Stratas says. “I strive to set an example of what they could and should be when they graduate. That is to be very good communicators, to assist, to be hard working, to be personable, to be responsive, and always, to be kind.”

He aims to add an extra dimension to the students’ education, “to help them graduate even more well-rounded and knowledgeable than they might otherwise be,” he adds. “I ﬁnd that enormously gratifying.”

It ’s this same collegial, caring approach to teaching that for

65 years and counting has endeared David Stratas, Dhaman Kissoon, and so many other adjunct faculty to students at Queen’s Law. As Associate Dean Kevin Banks, who oversees adjunct hiring, puts it, “Our adjunct professors aren’t just great teachers, they’re also terriﬁc mentors and role models.”

TEACHING THE NEXT GENERATION

Lawyers and judges, are you interested in teaching a course in your area of expertise?

Then follow Queen’s Law on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/school/queen’slaw/ to learn about adjunct faculty postings as they become available.

Professional and personal news of Queen’s Law graduates

Law’80 classmates kick up their heels

The Honourable Harvey Brownstone (3rd right) is celebrated by classmates – (l-r) Lawrence Blackman, Judith Ryan, Steven Trumper, Elizabeth Tulloch, Eleanor Somerleigh, Marianne Miller, Kathy Frise McBey (and Peter Rekai, not shown) – at Celebrate Queen’s Law in Toronto, where he was presented with the 2024 J.A. (Alec) Corry Distinguished Alumni Award on June 5; see page 41 for details.

1971

The Hon. Norm Douglas, Law’71 (Artsci’69), has written You Be The Judge (Irwin Law), an interactive legal exercise where readers engage with daily dilemmas faced in the courtroom and gain behind-the-scenes access to the Canadian justice system. Norm, whose legal career spans almost 50 years, presents the facts in 24 real-life homicide and true-crime cases that he either argued as a Crown prosecutor or later decided as an Ontario Court of Justice judge. In a collaborative exploration of ethics, morality, and legality, readers adjudicate, deliberate, and judge. “This is creative learning at its best,” wrote the Rt. Hon. David Johnston, Law’66, LLD’91. “It will do much to help our next generation.”

Gordon Kaiser, Law’71 (MA’72), died on May 16 at Mt. Sinai Hospital after a brief illness. A former partner at Gowlings, he appeared in courts across five provinces, the Federal Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court of Canada. In later years, he focused on energy policy, law, and arbitration. As Vice Chair of the Ontario Energy Board, his dissent in a 2007 hearing helped establish programs to lower electricity costs for lowincome households. He also served as CEO of Alberta’s Market Surveillance Administrator, helped initiate a course that has educated a generation of regulators, taught at Queen’s and two other law schools, founded and co-chaired the Canadian Energy Law Forum, was a founding editor of the Energy

Regulation Quarterly, and authored eight books. His survivors include his wife, Charlene Bain, and children Christine, Kelly, Gordon Jr., Jennifer, and Colleen.

1972

The Hon. Robert Graydon, Law’72, died at Belleville General Hospital on June 10 at age 77. He was a criminal defence counsel until his appointment to the Ontario Court of Justice in 2006. Though he retired from fulltime presiding in 2017, he continued to sit part-time while he served as Honorary Colonel of the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment. His survivors include his wife, Eleanor, daughter Sarah, son Rob, and son-in-law Adam.

Eric R. Williams, Law’72, received the 2024 John Nelligan Award for Excellence in Advocacy for the Ottawa region from The Advocates’ Society. Eric, now counsel with Williams Litigation Lawyers LLP, the firm he founded in 1978, has represented clients in civil and corporate litigation at every level of court in Canada, acting in over 185 civil trials and appeals. He frequently takes on complex cases referred by other lawyers and mentors on advocacy issues. Eric was also inducted into the American College of Trial Lawyers in 2006 and served as a Small Claims Court deputy judge for 15-plus years. Eric is married to Fay Brunning, Law’87

1973

John L. Hill, Law’73, a seasoned prison law lawyer and former correctional law instructor at Queen’s, has written a new book titled The Rest of the [True Crime] Story (AOS Publishing). While media reports on criminal activity often shift with the news

cycle, his book delves deeper, exploring the personal circumstances that led individuals to engage in anti-social behaviour and examining what happened to them after their arrest, offering a fuller picture of their lives. Drawing on his extensive experience within the criminal and correctional systems, Hill recounts true stories of those caught up in these systems, focusing not just on what happened, but on why it happened.

This fall, John will be participating in an “experiential roadshow” with the Hon. Norm Douglas, Law’71 (see page 30), and former criminal defence counsel the Hon. Jack Grossman. The three authors will be discussing their varying perspectives on crime, punishment, and law enforcement.

1974

The Hon. Mark G. Peacock, Law’74, received the 2023 John B. Stirling Montreal

Medal, the highest honour from the Queen’s University Alumni Association’s Montreal Branch. He was recognized for his commitment to Queen’s, public service, volunteerism, and support of bilingualism in Canada. Mark is a retired judge of the Superior Court of Quebec and helped pioneer public legal education in the province’s secondary schools through the Canadian Bar Association’s Quebec Branch, where he is a former president. For Queen’s he served on the Dean’s Advisory Council (1998-2004), established a constitutional law scholarship with his wife, Dru L. Spencer, and is a class reunion organizer.

1976

Brian Barrie, Law’76, wrote 4 Bullets, 4 Witnesses, 4 Liars (Irwin Law), a true crime novel

based on the second murder trial he argued while practising in Owen Sound, Ont. The book, which turns the reader into a juror tasked with determining the outcome of a rivetting whodunit, is leading the Grey County Reads competition for the best Canadian-authored novel of 2024. In the foreword, prominent defence lawyer Brian Greenspan wrote, “Whether described as a gripping murder mystery or an absorbing exposé of our justice system, it is a wonderful read.” Brian’s book is available at Indigo and at www.brianbarrie.com.

Bruce William Griffith, Law’76 (Artsci’72), lost his battle with pancreatic cancer on Aug. 25, 2023. After starting his career as a solo practitioner in Kingston, he joined the Crown Attorney’s Office in 1989 and was appointed Crown Attorney in 2000. In retirement he continued to be active on the board of Frontenac Mental Health, having seen firsthand how those with mental health issues frequently clash with the justice system, often with tragic results. His survivors include his wife, Margaret (Artsci’91), son James, daughterin-law Sarah, and grandchildren Gwen, Eli, and Ava.

1977

Peter Griffin, KC, LSM, Law’77, was presented with The Advocates’ Society Medal on Oct. 30 for his outstanding advocacy, leadership, and enduring contributions to the legal profession and community. Now Counsel with Lenczner Slaght LLP, the firm he co-founded, Peter is recognized as one of Canada’s top litigators in corporate commercial law, class actions, securities matters, insolvency, and professional and director/ officer liability. He has appeared before all levels of court in Ontario, the common-law provinces, and the Supreme Court of Canada. Peter is also a past president of The Advocates’ Society, a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, and a member of the Queen’s Law Dean’s Council.

1979

Michael Ross, Law’79, died on Feb. 3 at age 78. He entered law school as a 35-year-old mature student and at graduation shared an award with Kenny Wise in commercial law. Michael practised law in Toronto. His survivors include his wife, Debbie, son Joel and daughter-in-law Hindy, and grandchildren Sammy, Isaac, and Adina.

1980

Marianne Miller, Law’80, wrote her debut novel, We Were the Bullfighters (Dundurn Press), about Ernest Hemingway’s time at the Toronto Daily Star in 1923. Struggling with the responsibilities of marriage and unexpected fatherhood, Hemingway interrupts his fledgling writing career in Paris to take a gruelling job as a Star staff reporter. On his first day, already feeling hemmed in by circumstances, he’s sent to cover notorious bank robber Red Ryan’s escape from Kingston Penitentiary. Fascinated with the convict, who risked everything to be free, Hemingway ponders duty, freedom, and what stops a man from pursuing his dreams. Further details are at www.mariannemiller.ca.

1981

Lynda Milligan-Whyte, Law’81 (Arts’74, Ed’75, MPA’76), died in August in her 80th year. One of her native Bermuda’s first

corporate lawyers, she helped to strengthen the island’s reputation as a respectable offshore jurisdiction in the 1980s. In 1987, she was elected a senator for the ruling United Bermuda Party and became known as a tireless advocate for social justice, emphasizing the lack of educational and economic opportunities for most Bermudians. She served two terms in the Upper House for the UBP. Lynda’s survivors include her son, Jerome Johnson.

1984

Albert Koehl, Law’84, an environmental lawyer and cycling advocate, authored Wheeling through Toronto: A History of the Bicycle and Its Riders (University of Toronto Press). The book chronicles Toronto’s 130-year cycling history, exploring the bicycle’s fluctuating status – from a fashionable trend to a derided mode of transport, and now, to a crucial response to climate challenges. Albert details the rise of the car, the resurgence of cycling advocacy, and the

bicycle’s role as affordable, clean, and joyful mobility. Through archival research and interviews, he emphasizes the bicycle’s significance in Toronto’s past and its potential for contributing to a sustainable future.

Linda Locke, Law’84, received the 2024 Georges A. Goyer, QC Memorial Award for Distinguished Service from the Canadian Bar Association’s B.C. Branch. Linda is a managing lawyer in northern B.C. with the Upper Skeena Counselling & Legal Assistance Society. For over 30 years, with limited staff and funding, she has provided legal assistance primarily to Indigenous clients across a large, remote area. She also played an instrumental role in establishing the Hazelton Indigenous Sentencing Court, a specialized, culturally appropriate provincial court for Indigenous people charged with criminal offences. Chief Justice of British Columbia Leonard Marchand, pictured with Linda above, was among the first to congratulate her.

1986

Stephen Lautens, Law’86, was appointed Honorary Vice-Consul of the Republic of Austria for Ontario in July 2023. In this diplomatic post, Stephen provides consular services to Austrian citizens in Ontario, represents Austria at international and cultural events, and assists the

Advantage Austria Trade Commission in Toronto. This year, he was appointed a board member of the Consular Corps Association of Toronto and board Director of Ciscom Corp., a public company that invests in, acquires, and manages profitable companies in the information and communication technology sector.

John Moszynski, Law’86, died on June 26 in his 72nd year. He was a passionate drummer and labour lawyer who represented unions and their members. His survivors include his wife, Anne, and his siblings Michael, Natalie, and Christine.

1989

David K. Edwards, Law’89, General Counsel with the Health Canada Legal Services Unit, Department of Justice, coauthored The Regulation of Drugs in Canada: The Food and Drugs Act and Related Intellectual Property Regimes (Irwin Law). This book provides a comprehensive overview of Canadian laws governing drug manufacture and sale, including pharmaceuticals, vaccines, and natural health products. It covers new regulatory pathways introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as expedited reviews for vaccines and therapies, as well as the modernized framework for clinical trials and Advanced Therapeutic Products. The book also details the

intellectual property framework impacting drug approval processes, explaining the balance between innovation and competition

1992

between brand-name and generic manufacturers. David is a featured expert in QLR’s cover story on remedies for the health-care crisis (pp. 12-21).

Sunita Doobay, Law’92, a partner at Blaney McMurtry LLP, returned to Queen’s Law on March 13 to headline a networking event hosted by the Queen’s Tax Law Society with Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (Canada) Chair Rachel Blumenfeld and COO Michael Dodick. Sunita, Rachel, and Michael discussed with students the complexities of estate planning, tax implications, and the pivotal role of an executor. Michael was instrumental in establishing the new STEP Canada Scholarship awarded to JD students excelling in a wills and estates or trusts and equity course. Sunita, also an adjunct faculty member at Queen’s Law, is teaching International Taxation this fall.

1993

Hugh Adsett, Law’93, was appointed Canada’s Ambassador to the Kingdom of the Netherlands and Permanent Representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in October 2023. In June, Hugh and his wife, Beth Alexander, Law’93, hosted a reception at the Ambassador’s historic residence in The Hague, where students in Queen’s Public International Law Program met with lawyers and judges. (See page 8 for more news about this program and the International Business Law Program.) Hugh co-taught the International Human Rights Law course for many years when it was held at Bader College.

1996

Leanne Kaufman, Law’96, President and CEO of RBC Royal Trust and Chair of the Queen’s University Gift Planning Advisory Committee, began writing the Wealth Management column for Foundations Magazine in March. Her first topics covered planned philanthropic giving and navigating the upcoming great generational wealth transfer from baby boomers and its implications for philanthropy.

Melinda “Lynne” (Klein) Thompson, Law’96, died Nov. 4, 2022, at age 73. Before beginning her pre-law studies in 1991, she worked as a librarian at an English school in Chicoutimi, Que. After her call to the bar, she practised as a criminal defense lawyer until 2017 in Burlington, Ont., where she and her husband, Eric, lived until relocating to Ottawa in 2020. She’s also survived by her children, Jennifer and Benjamin, and grandchildren Alden and Scotland.

1998

Obijiofor Aginam, LLM’98, was appointed Director of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development. He took up his new post in New Delhi, India, in July. UNESCO MGIEP promotes the development of regional, sub-regional, and national institutional capacities in education for peace and sustainable development to meet the research and capacity-building needs of developing countries and countries in transition. Among other tasks, Obi will develop strategies to strengthen co-operation in the areas of education for peace, education for sustainable development, and global citizenship education. UNESCO is the United Nations’ lead agency for Sustainable Development Goal 4 on inclusive quality education. Obi is also a featured expert in QLR’s cover story on remedies for the health-care crisis (pp. 12-21).

2001

Rebecca Jaremko Bromwich, Law’01, LLM’02, was called to the bar of Nunavut in 2024 and has started in a new role as Senior Program Manager and Advisor with the Law Society of Nunavut.

2003 and 2004

Joanne Stuart, Law’03, and Tracy (Stapleton) Kozlowski, Law’04, wrote The Proactive Practitioner’s Guide to Section 11(b) of the Charter (Irwin Law) to assist lawyers with addressing delay issues in the criminal justice system. Since the Supreme Court’s decision in R v. Jordan, a complex body of jurisprudence has developed around the Charter’s section 11(b). This book offers a comprehensive review of case law, covering when section 11(b) is engaged, its application to proceedings, and definitions of key concepts like defence-caused delay and exceptional circumstances. It also addresses the pandemic’s impact, section 11(b)’s role in sentencing, and interlocutory proceedings. This guide provides practitioners with case analysis, legal argument foundations, and insights into areas still open for litigation under section 11(b).

2005

Kwang Lim, Law’05, was appointed Managing Partner of Bennett Jones LLP’s Vancouver, B.C., office on March 31. With this firm that he joined as a student in 2005, Kwang practises corporate and securities law and has led or been involved in some of the firm’s most complex and high-profile corporate finance and merger and acquisition transactions.

2007

Danielle Boisvert, Law’07, received the first Mary Moreau Award from the Criminal Trial Lawyers’ Association in 2023. The award recognizes her, as a female defence counsel with 5-15 years of experience, for her steadfast commitment to the defence of civil liberties and the rule of law, as well as her contributions to advancing women in criminal defence. In March 2023, Danielle co-founded BW Law LLP, a female-partners-only defence firm in Edmonton, Alta., with Anny Wang.

2008, 2016, and 2017

Garth Dingwall, Law’08 (above), and Brett Roane, Law’16 (below), are founding partners of R&D LLP, a Torontobased business law boutique firm. Garth, who leads the Litigation Group, and Brett, who leads the Business Law Group, founded R&D LLP to meet the unique needs of entrepreneurs and small businesses. They, along with associates Ryan Shin, Law’17, and Taz Yailaqi, were recognized as Top Lawyers in Toronto for 2023 and 2024 by Post City Magazines. Following a successful acquisition in April, the firm seeks to expand further by acquiring another retiring Ontario lawyer’s business law or commercial litigation practice. For inquiries, contact Brett (brett@rdlegal.ca, 416-962-0304, rdlegal.ca).

2009

Jonathan M. Keslassy and Adam R. Freedman, both Law’09, celebrated the 8th anniversary of their law firm, Keslassy Freedman Gelfand LLP (www.kfglaw.ca), on Sept. 6. Based in midtown Toronto, the firm serves clients in civil litigation, business law, real property, and wills and estates. Jonathan and Adam are grateful to their Queen’s Law classmates and professors for their ongoing support.

2010

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Law’10, Liberal MP for Beaches-East York (shown with Professor Nick Bala, Law’77), returned to his alma mater to meet with students and faculty on Sept. 19, 2023. Nate discussed substantive policy issues, spoke about career opportunities in public service and government, shared how his Queen’s Law experience shaped his personal and professional journey, and introduced Professor Colin Grey’s Public Law class.

Natalia Rodriguez, Law’10, a partner with Conway Baxter Wilson LLP in Ottawa, achieved three career milestones in 2023. She was elected a Bencher of the Law Society of Ontario in May, appointed an adjudicator to the Law Society Tribunal in June, and, in October, named Commission Counsel to the Foreign Interference Commission, inquiring into foreign interference in federal elections and democratic institutions.

2013

Greg Cholkan, Law’13, had a momentous year in 2023. Most importantly, he married Heather Gibbons, the love of his life, in July. A few months earlier, they’d honeymooned at the Athabasca Sand Dunes in northern Saskatchewan, where “the bizarre and beautiful landscapes did not disappoint.” This photo of them taken during a paddling trip to Woodland Caribou Provincial Park was featured in Northern Ontario Travel magazine. Other Ontario highlights include finding big lake trout through the ice in Whitney; fishing for walleye and brook trout in the Manitouwadge area; foraging wild leeks in and around Muskoka; guide work on summer canoe fishing trips; kayaking to find largemouth bass; and braving the cold in October and November by canoe in search of splake in and around Algonquin Park. Greg’s retirement-from-practice adventures continue, with plans for a fly-in camping trip with three friends in Algoma.

2016

Kerri Froc, PhD’16, a professor at UNB Law (shown with Professor Bita Amani), returned to Queen’s Law on Nov. 13, 2023, and gave give an insightful talk on what the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization means for reproductive rights in Canada.

2017

Kate Mitchell, Law’17, received a 2024 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholarship for her doctoral studies at the University of Toronto. Kate’s research focuses on developing a legal framework to protect the rule of law in prisons. As a volunteer with the Canadian Prison Law Association, she prepared intervention submissions for two Supreme Court of Canada cases and various submissions responding to legislation impacting prisoners’ rights, and she appeared before the Senate on behalf of the Criminal Lawyers’ Association on a prisoners’ rights bill.

2021 and 2022

2019

Stephanie Simpson, LLM’19 (Artsci’95, Ed’97, MEd’11), received a 2024 Distinguished Service Award from Queen’s University. Appointed the university’s inaugural VicePrincipal (Culture, Equity, and Inclusion) in 2023, she has shown unwavering commitment to anti-racism and equity throughout her 25-year career. Stephanie is deeply involved in policy development to make Queen’s more accessible and equitable. Her work continues to have a lasting impact on equity-deserving staff, faculty, and students, and on those striving to support enduring positive change within the Queen’s community.

Alex Karlsen, Law’21 (left), and Sam Fata, Law'22 (right), met Jonah Muyal, Law’25, the first recipient of the Wildeboer Dellelce LLP Scholarship in Contract Law on March 12. Alex and Sam, both lawyers with this Toronto-based donor firm, returned to Queen’s Law to give a talk on the closing process in mergers and acquisitions and securities transactions, as well as an overview of the firm, at an event organized by Queen’s Securities Law Club.

Scott Garland, Law’22, died unexpectedly at his home on Feb. 6 at age 27. He had just begun his career practising with McCarthy, Hansen and Company LLP, a family law firm in Toronto. At law school, he was on the Dean’s Honour List, received a Global Law Scholarship to complete his Certificate in Public International Law at Bader College, and received a Public Interest Internship Award to work as a Debwewin Summer Law Student at Nokiiwin Tribal Council in Thunder Bay. Scott is survived by his parents, Kim and Ross, and his sister and brotherin-law, Katie and Shawn Brown.

2023

Jessica Izard, Law’23, received the 2023 Alexander Fraser Laidlaw Fellowship from

Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada and the Co-operative Housing Federation Canada for her research on worker co-operatives as a solution to legal issues in family farm succession planning. She developed an interest in the topic during law school, working with the Queen’s Elder Law Clinic and later completing a research project for Professor Gail Henderson.

William Lundy, Law’23, will clerk for Justice Nicholas Kasirer at the Supreme Court of Canada in 2025-2026. He received the call from the judge himself on March 1 at the Crown Attorney’s Office in Niagara, Ont., where he was articling. William looks forward to providing Justice Kasirer with research on complex legal issues of national importance.

Caroline Marful and Isabelle Nazarian, both Law’23, presented their paper on climate-change-related trade policy instruments at the University Association for Contemporary European Studies conference held at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland in September 2023. Their paper was the result of two years of coursework completed during their JD studies. Caroline and Isabelle developed an interest in the topic in Professor Nicolas Lamp’s International Trade Law Practicum.

ZABRINA

TESTA

Three key women in school’s history

On Nov. 27, 2023, three notable women gathered in the student lounge: Dean Colleen M. Flood; Geraldine Tepper, Law’60, a graduate of Queen’s Law’s first class who still practises in Kingston; and Justice Alison Harvison Young of the Court of Appeal for Ontario, the school’s first female Dean of Law, who served from 1998 to 2004. Justice Harvison Young returned to deliver a talk on legal ethics and the artificial intelligence revolution to a live and online audience, emphasizing the need for lawyers and law students to critically examine AI-generated information.

Three grads are among Lexpert’s latest ‘Leading Lawyers Under 40’

Named to Lexpert magazine’s 2023 list of “Rising Stars” were these alumni, who are working across Canada:

David Kramer, Law’08/ MBA’09, Senior Legal Counsel at Suncor Energy Inc. in Calgary, advises its downstream fuel business, including the Petro-Canada retail and wholesale network and refinery operations across Canada.

Amaan Gangji, Law’09, a partner at Lawson Lundell LLP in Vancouver, specializes in mergers and acquisitions and advises on complex business transactions involving Canadian, U.S., and international stakeholders.

Law’85 grads and former House of Commons colleagues celebrated at ‘supreme’ launch for their foundational Canadian books

Two books by Law’85 classmates are among those in the Understanding Canada (Irwin Law) series, launched at the Supreme Court of Canada on Sept. 20, 2023. The series aims to empower every Canadian with essential information about their constitutional, political, and legal institutions.

Wendy Gordon, Law’85, co-authored Drafting, Interpreting, and Applying Legislation, drawing on her experience as Legislative Counsel for the federal Department of Justice and the House of Commons’ Office of the Law Clerk. In the latter position, she led a legislative team to assist MPs with private members’ bills and amendments. In the book, Wendy and John Mark Keyes, former federal Chief Legislative Counsel, chart the life cycle of legislation, from its drafting and transformation into law to its interpretation and application. The book covers how legislation is written and enacted, as well as key interpretive principles.

Sharon Ford, Law’11, a partner at Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP in Toronto, advises on domestic and international tax aspects of fund formation, cross-border transactions, and mergers and acquisitions.

Steven Chaplin, Law’85, wrote Canada’s Parliament: A Primer, which explores the roots of Canada’s Parliament in the U.K. and its evolution into a uniquely Canadian institution since Confederation. Steven, a deputy executive editor of the Journal of Parliamentary and Political Law and former Senior Legal Counsel for the House of Commons, explains how Parliament functions and its constitutional components – the Commons, the Senate, and the monarch. The book offers insight into how individuals and political parties can engage in Canada’s democratic institutions to improve their effectiveness for the people of Canada.

LISA GRAHAM

Local law society celebrates four alumni

Demonstrating the close ties between Queen’s Law and the local bar, the Frontenac Law Association’s Annual General Meeting on June 19 featured several highlights:

Karla McGrath, LLM’13, pictured at left in the photo below, completed her two-year term as FLA President and handed over the leadership reins to Christina Rorabeck, Law’04 (right), a partner at RST Law.

Karla was appointed Assistant Dean, JD program, in August, following nine years as Executive Director of the Queen’s Law Clinics.

Eric Bennett, Law’86 ( 2 nd right), retired partner at Cunningham Swan Carty Little & Bonham LLP, received the Lou Tepper Award of Excellence for his outstanding contributions to the legal profession and the Frontenac County community. In attendance to congratulate him was Geraldine Tepper, Law’60 (2nd left), widow of the award’s honoree.

Stefan Rookwood, Law’24 (inset), who is articling with Templeman LLP, received the FLA Bursary as a recent Queen’s graduate planning to practice locally

Judicial Appointments

Grads

from across Canada join the bench; two receive ‘supreme’ provincial appointments; one judge advances to Ontario’s top court

Darla A. Wilson, Law’84 (Artsci’81), was appointed to the Court of Appeal for Ontario on May 1, following 16 years as a judge on Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice and four years as the Civil Team Lead for trials in Toronto. Prior to her judicial appointment, she was a partner at Lawson McGrenere LLP in Toronto, where she practised exclusively in civil litigation. She defended hospitals and other health-care facilities throughout Ontario in negligence claims, handled general insurance defence work including occupiers’ liability, motor vehicle, and municipal negligence claims, and represented plaintiffs in personal injury cases. Additionally, she has taught trial advocacy to JD students and has served as a director of The Advocates’ Society and as a board member of both the Medico-Legal Society and the Ontario Superior Court Judges’ Association. At Queen’s Law, she participated in the Moot Court Council and is a member of the Dean’s Council. Justice Wilson succeeded Justice Alison Harvison Young, a former Queen’s Law dean who elected to become a supernumerary judge on Sept. 1, 2023.

S. James Mountford, Law’86, counsel and Family Law Group leader at Scarfone Hawkins LLP in Hamilton, was appointed to the Superior Court of Justice of Ontario, Family Court, in Kitchener on June 18. Previously he was a partner at Spears Mountford and Associates and in-house counsel at the Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Hamilton. For his contributions to the Hamilton Law Association, including serving on its Family Law Sub-Committee and presenting on litigation skills, ethics, and case law updates, he received the 2023 Justice Patricia Wallace Community Service Award. He has also taught and guest-lectured at McMaster University, coached and judged the Ontario Bar Association Moot Court Competition, and been president of the Hamilton International Air Show, and a director of the Air Cadet League.

Stephen J. Wojciechowski, Law’88, owner of ERYOU Barristers in Thunder Bay, was appointed to the Superior Court of Justice of Ontario on Jan. 29. For 28 years he defended insurance claims focussed on institutional risks, appearing before all levels of court in Ontario as well as the Supreme Court of Canada. Previously with Buset & Eryou, he practised real estate, wills, labour law, and family law. He also served as president of the Thunder Bay Law Association, managed its continuing legal education programs, taught advanced civil practice to JD students at Bora Laskin Law School, was a

left to right:

Darla A. Wilson, Law’84 (Artsci’81)

Stephen J. Wojciechowski, Law’88

facing page, left to right:

Reginald Alexander Cornelius, Law’93

Leanne M. O’Leary, KC, Law’95

Apple C. Newton-Smith, Law’97

Alexandre Kaufman, Law’02

Sandra Sukstorf, LLM’12

director of The Advocates’ Society and a member of the Ontario Civil Rules Committee. In February 2023 he was elected a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers.

Michael Battista, Law’90, a certiﬁed specialist in immigration and refugee law and founding counsel at Battista Migration Law Group in Toronto, was appointed to the Federal Court on May 1. At the Supreme Court of Canada, he has represented intervenors Amnesty International, EGALE Canada, and Rainbow Railroad, which is an international 2SLGBTQI+ refugee support organization that he founded and chairs. He coauthored Canadian Family and Immigration Law: Intersections, Developments, and Conﬂicts (Carswell, 2015) and Family Class Sponsorship in Canadian Immigration Law (Emond, 2021). He’s a past AIDS Committee of Toronto chair, an Ontario AIDS Network Honour Roll inductee, and a recipient of awards for community service and university teaching, as well as the 2023 Business Advocate Award from Canada's 2SLGBTQI+ Chamber of Commerce.

Reginald Alexander Cornelius, Law’93, was appointed to the Ontario Court of Justice on July 13, 2023, presiding in Brampton. During his 28 years with the Crown Attorney’s Office in Peel, he served as an assistant Crown attorney, a member of the Homicide Prosecution Team, and a designated wiretap agent. In addition to his caseload, he provided continuing education to legal staff on topics such as search warrants and crossexamination, delivered legal education to police services, and mentored articling and summer law students. With a keen interest in inclusion, diversity, and equity, he has conducted several seminars on these topics at Ontario law schools and for The Advocates’ Society, as well as mentored its members and those of the Canadian Association of Black Lawyers.

Leanne M. O’Leary, KC, Law’95, was appointed to the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador, General Division, on Aug. 28, 2023. Previously, in St. John’s, she was managing partner at Cox & Palmer, where she spent her entire career practising civil and commercial litigation, personal injury, and insurance law. Best Lawyers in Canada and the Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory consistently recognized her as a leading practitioner in those areas. With N.L.’s Law Society, she was elected a bencher for two terms, chaired its Education Committee, and taught civil procedure. For her volunteer work, which included board positions with N.L.’s Public Legal

Information Association and the YM-YWCA of St. John’s, she was awarded a Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal.

Apple C. Newton-Smith, Law’97, a judge of the Ontario Court of Justice since 2019, was appointed to the Superior Court of Justice of Ontario in May. She presides in Toronto. Prior to her bench appointment, she was a partner at Berkes NewtonSmith, practising as a criminal defence lawyer at both the trial and appellate level and appearing regularly at all levels of court for 20 years. She has served as a VP of the Criminal Lawyers’ Association, a board member of the Ontario Court of Appeal’s Pro Bono Inmate Appeals Program, chair of the Ontario Judicial Education Network’s Toronto committee, an editor of the Law Society of Ontario’s lawyer licensing materials, and taught JD and undergraduate criminology students.

Alexandre Kaufman, Law’02, was appointed to the Superior Court of Justice of Ontario in Ottawa on Aug. 28, 2023. For the ﬁve years prior, he was an associate justice, presiding over civil, family, and bankruptcy matters in both official languages. Previously, he was a litigator for the Federal Crown with the Department of Justice’s Civil Litigation Section and a Crown prosecutor with the Public Prosecution Service of Canada. His practice included administrative, constitutional, commercial, and employment law, trade remedies, human rights, and torts, and he appeared before all levels of court in Ontario and numerous federal administrative tribunals. He has taught JD and college students, lectured in legal education programs, chaired an Ontario Judicial Education Network region, and co-authored Arbitration Legislation of Ontario (Carswell, 2023).

Sandra Sukstorf, LLM’12, a military judge since 2017, was appointed to the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Port Coquitlam on Feb. 28. She began her career as a legal officer with the Canadian Armed Forces’ Office of the Judge Advocate General and later managed the Investigations, Monitoring, and Enforcement department at the Law Society of B.C. Her expertise in maritime and international criminal law was crucial in addressing legal issues for the Royal Canadian Navy, and she was an inaugural legal advisor in the Copenhagenconvened legal working group for the Contact Group on Piracy off the coast of Somalia. For her dedicated service, she was inducted as an Officer into the Order of Military Merit and received a Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal.

Wilfred Prachter, Law’60, a first graduating class member, gave back to alma mater with $200k bequest

In 1957, the newly established Faculty entrance interview, Vice-Principal Alec Corry, then acting Law dean, she adds, “told him, ‘I believe you, and if you have a university degree, you’ll succeed in law school; if you’re being dishonest, you’ll fail. But I think you deserve a chance.’”

of Law at Queen’s University opened its doors to German immigrant Wilfred A. Prachter, who went on to have a distinguished legal career. He later paid that opportunity forward with a $200,000 estate gift to the school.

Wilfred passed away at his home in Ottawa on Nov. 5, 2023, in his 96th year. Born in Hildesheim, Germany, Wilfred lost 13 of his maternal relatives when the city was bombed in March 1945. In 1952, he immigrated to Canada with his future wife, Jean, and $100 in his pocket, of which he spent $60 on their marriage. The couple worked multiple jobs to fund his education.

As a member of Queen’s Law’s ﬁrst graduating class of 18 students, he formed lifelong friendships with Bill Lane and with the only two women in the class, Mary-Alice Murray –who went on to become the ﬁrst Registrar of Law, beloved by generations of students – and Geraldine Tepper. “The four of us were always together,” says Geraldine, recalling her late friends. “After every exam, we went out for ice cream and hashed over the questions. Mary-Alice drove us north of Kingston to Verona in her vintage family car.”

Wilfred’s personal records were destroyed by bombings during the Second World War, so “he had nothing to prove he held a university degree from Germany,” says Geraldine. “It was Queen’s that gave him a chance.” During Wilfred’s

Alumni and

faculty

Geraldine further recalls that Professor Stuart Ryan, another founding faculty member, helped launch Wilfred’s career by introducing him to an Ottawa ﬁrm with the German Embassy as a client. Wilfred built his own connections, eventually establishing a solo international law practice in downtown Ottawa, focusing on German-Canadian economic partnerships. He represented numerous German businesses and families in Canada and engaged deeply in post-war diplomatic relations between the two countries.

In 2012, he was recognized as a Life Member of the Law Society of Ontario, having been in good standing for over 50 years, and was appointed an Honorary Member for life of the Canadian Bar Association. Wilfred, whose wife died in 2016, continued working until the age of 90.

“Wilfred was very successful, but also very low key,” Geraldine reﬂects. “I’m glad he left Queen’s some money. That’s wonderful.” Apparently, Wilfred never forgot the encouragement and the conﬁdence VP Corry and Professor Ryan had in him.

To create a legacy at Queen’s Law, explore planned giving options at www.queensu.ca/alumni/supporting-queens/giftplanning or connect with the Queen’s University Gift Planning Team at 1-800-267-7837 or gift.planning@queensu.ca.

present a primer on two essential estate planning topics

On Jan. 18, Alexandra Manthorpe, Law’10, a partner and wills and estates lawyer at Cunningham Swan Carty Little & Bonham LLP, and Leanne Kaufman, Law’96, President and CEO of RBC Royal Trust, returned to their alma mater for a panel titled “Incapacity Planning and End-of-Life Decision-Making: A Primer,” moderated by Professor David Freedman. They discussed the

growing need for incapacity planning due to increasing life expectancy in Canada – women averaging 84 years and men, 80 The panel focused on Ontario’s legal framework for powers of attorney and substitute decision-makers, explaining who makes decisions for those unable to manage their personal care or property. Listen to the podcast at law.queens.ca/incapacity-planning

Congratulations to our 2024 award winners!

An Indigenous trade champion, a young executive legal officer, a federal policy-maker, and a trailblazing judge-turned-media-star have one thing in common. They are all recipients of this year’s Queen’s Law alumni awards.

The Dean’s Council awards committee selected these winners from a strong list of nominees put forward by their fellow grads.

Wayne Garnons-Williams, Law’90 

H.R.S. Ryan Law Alumni Award of Distinction for overall distinction in the legal profession

This prominent ﬁgure in Indigenous law and advocacy serves as President of the International Inter-tribal Trade and Investment Organization, CEO of the National Sixties Scoop Healing Foundation of Canada, and CEO of an international business specializing in tribal trade and sustainable economic development – alongside running his Garwill Law practice. Notably, he acted as Canada’s lead Indigenous negotiator for the Indigenous Peoples Economic Trade and Cooperation Arrangement. He holds various board positions, has received numerous awards for contributions to Indigenous rights and international law, is actively involved in Indigenous trade policy development, and has a book forthcoming (Cambridge).

Hayley Pitcher, Law’14 

Dan Soberman Outstanding Young Alumni Award for early-career success

After litigating high-proﬁle constitutional cases for the Attorney General of Ontario, she earned her LLM in 2019 from the University of Melbourne, where she served as an associate member and research assistant at its Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies. In 2021 she joined the Court of Appeal for Ontario as counsel and was recently promoted to senior leadership as its ﬁrst Deputy Executive Legal Officer. She speaks frequently on mental health in the legal profession and received the Michael Fleishman Award from the Association of Law Officers of the Crown for her exceptional commitment to public law, mentoring, and fairness.

John H. Sims, CM, KC, Law’71 (Arts’67) 

Justice Thomas Cromwell Distinguished Public Service Award for sustained and outstanding public service

For ﬁve years of his 33-year career with the Department of Justice, he served as Deputy Minister of Justice and Deputy Attorney General of Canada, advising Ministers and Cabinet on key policy and operational matters. His leadership shaped legal services and policy on criminal law reform, family justice, and public safety. He chaired the Canadian Bar Association’s Committee on Access to Justice (A2J) and contributed to the Action Committee on A2J in Civil and Family Matters. Among his honours, he received the Outstanding Achievement Award of the Public Service of Canada in 2010 and an Honorary LLD from the Law Society of Ontario in 2014.

The Honourable Harvey Brownstone, Law’80 

J.A. (Alec) Corry Distinguished Alumni Award for excelling in a career outside the traditional practice of law

Canada’s ﬁrst openly gay judge made history again as the world’s ﬁrst sitting judge to write a national bestseller, Tug of War, and to host both a TV show (“Family Matters with Justice Harvey Brownstone”) and an online talk show, (“Harvey Brownstone Interviews”). After retiring from the judiciary in 2021, he focused on his interview series, which now attracts more than 5 million online viewers monthly, plus 3 million weekly TV viewers in the U.K. The program features in-depth interviews with Hollywood icons from cinema, TV, and music, and ranks 12th on the Hollywood 411 list of the world’s top talk shows.

Running virtually December 9 - 13, 2024

Queen’s AI and Law Certificate bridges theory and practice to give participants a foundational understanding of AI in the context of Canadian law.

Earn four (4) CPD credits